OAG Club Kreisel - German****
Aoyama 1-chomeAddress - Doitsu Bunka Kaikan, 7-5-56 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052 Opening hours - Open from 11:30 to 2:00 and from 5:00 to 10:00. Closed Sundays and third Saturday of the month Map - See its site Telephone - 3583-9487 Menu - In Japanese, English and German CC - No
Note:
The OAG Club Kreisel and its sister restaurant, Zum Einhorn, have a site (Japanese and German).The Kreisel is a restaurant I know very well but I have never reviewed, and you will see why. Seeing it reviewed in Robb Satterwhite's Tokyo Food Page, however, made me want to add my bit, and here it is.
There are few places in Tokyo as unattractive as Aoyama 1-chome. Even its name is clumsy, with that number and a hyphen. Get out of the Ginza Line station and all you see is on one side an infinitely long wall that keeps riff-raff like me and you out of the Imperial Family's gardens, and on the other a few ugly office buildings. It's equally close to Akasaka, Roppongi, and Shibuya, but dead as a doornail. Why would anybody want to come here, if not to study German at the Goethe Institut, I don't know.
What's worse is that, if you are coming to eat at the Kreisel, you will soon realize that it's INSIDE the Goethe Institut, which is a school of German and looks exactly like one.
In the seven years I studied German there I spent many hours at the Club, munching brown bread and sausages while waiting for friends to show up and/or a class to begin, but I never really ate there. You know, one enjoys a change in atmosphere, after school. Still, I have sampled most of their dishes,. The menu is indeed attractive and contains all it should, from Leberkaese to Weisswurst, soups, Forelle, chicken and beef (this is one of the very few places in town that makes Steak Tartare, if they haven't stopped because of mad cow desease). A good and not too expensive German restaurant, not haute-cuisine, you see, but for normal people like us. If you can manage to get rid of the impression of being eating at a Renoir coffee shop, it's indeed good.
Owner Mr. Noda used to work in Germany and some time ago was asked by Mercedes Benz to open a restaurant at their headquarters, and Mr. Noda did. The new venue is Zum Einhorn, which should be as good as Kreisel, even though it too is a little out of the way.
In conclusion, Kreisel caters mainly to people related to the Goethe Institut, and there is an obvious reason for that. So, if you happen to be in Aoyama 1-chome, fine, go. Otherwise, to eat German food I would recommend going to Bernd's Bar in Roppongi or Pauke (unreviewed) in Ichigaya.
A message from Claus P. Regge::Hi.
I just read your review of Kreisel, and it seems quite accurate.
Three other reasons for going to Aoyama 1-chome might be:
* Honda headquarters right on the corner, with their B I G showroom
* The Canadian Embassy with its nice art gallery
* Sogetsu Kaikan, the world headquarters of Sogetsu-ryu ikebana, and their frequently changing displays of not just ikebana, but a lot of modern art. There's also a concert hall in the same building, and I have been to some very pleasant chamber music concerts there.
Best
Claus
P.S.
You mention "Der Pauke." Well, "Pauke is a feminine noun in German, hence should be "die Pauke." However, the beer restaurant's name ist just "Pauke" -- no article"
Duly noted and corrected. Apparently, seven years of German are not sufficient to master it. No surprise there: Mark Twain once said he'd rather decline two good whiskeys than one German adjective ...