La Tourelle - French***
Kagurazaka

Address - Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Kagurazaka 6-8 Opening hours - 11:30 to 14:30 and 18:00 to 22:00. Closed on Monday Map - Yes  Telephone - 32672120 Menu - In Japanese and French CC - OK

In the "About" section of my site I say:
"Over the years I have developed a pet theory according to which restaurants serve good food only as long as the bill remains below a certain figure, variable according to the city and the nation and which in the case of Tokyo is about 5000 yen. This, again according to my theory, because to the common man what counts is the food, whereas to the rich or to the poor in disguise what counts is status and power. This rule of thumb has so far rarely betrayed me: if you want to eat mediocre food and spend a fortune to impress your squeeze, Sabatini di Roma and La Ranarita are the places you are looking for." As you can see, I may be extreme, but I do know what I like.
No better example of my pet theory could be found than La Tourelle. Expensive as shit: the cheapest dessert costs 1700 (sic) yen, exclusive of taxes and table charges. Stuckup as anything I've seen so far: for example, you got six implements of various nature and design on each side of the plate. One looked, if you ask me, as a fairly typical spoon: it was, I was told, a highly stylized fish knife. And the food! seven different dishes in diminutive, and I mean really diminutive, portions served at generous intervals so that you can fully enjoy the smiling sommellier at you side talking all the time. If the food had been superlative, I could have still conceived the idea of giving the place a neutral review. It was mediocre, rich in ornamentation and poor in flavor. In the curried quail I could hardly find the quail: it looked and tasted like ham. Regardless of price, I'd rather eat at La Dinette paying just 2500 yen, with the added bonus of not having to worry about whether my elbows are on the table. Having spent 9000 yen without drinks, must I add that wines were overpriced? Of course they were. Read on.

Another opinion on La Tourelle by Claus Regge.
We were a group of five that evening at La Tourelle. Four ordered the set dinner for Yen 7000 plus plus..., only I ordered a la carte, for reasons explained below. My generous portion of foie gras heated in a slightly herby butter sauce was truly excellent, a memorable treat and certainly worth the Yen 3600 it cost. Fortunately, no chef had tried to hide or manipulate the natural taste of the high-quality ingredient that went into this dish -- a prime example of non-interference paying off handsomely. My main dish, something with duck, was pleasing but so eminently forgettable that I've already forgotten what exactly it was. Although those two courses cost about the same as the seven included in the full course, I believe I got the better deal.

Will I go back to La Tourelle, then? Probably not, and that's because of our miserable experience with their wine list and the fussy but clueless waiter who doubles as a sommelier. A rather haphazard collection of this and that, all French, all overpriced. We started with a bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape from an unfamiliar (to me) estate, a '97 that totally lacked the depth and fruity richness that wines from that area on the Southern Rhone can (and should) possess. At around Yen 7000, a waste of money. Then, I ordered a bottle of '93 Chateau Grand-Puy-Ducasse, a Pauillac 5th growth in the 1855 classification of Medoc wines. Not often seen on wine lists in Japan, Grand-Puy-Ducasse is capable of elegant, fruity, not overly tannic wines in a good year. Ninety-three, as it turned out, was not a good year for Ducasse (although other chateaux made thoroughly enjoyable wines in that year). Thin, drying out, lacking fruit, not a hint of the leather and cigar notes on the nose and the black currant on the palate that one expects from a Pauillac. Probably badly cellared, too. Served much too cold, until I convinced the waiter that no full-bodied red should be served at under 18 degrees.

The price? Almost Yen 10,000; that is, in my opinion, 40 to 50 percent more than it could possibly be worth. A few wines on the list looked more promising, such as an '88 Pichon-Lalande, but at around Yen 30,000 temptation evaporates quickly. La Tourelle still seems to follow the bubble-economy era rule that wine is a status-laden luxury, not an integral and necessary part of a French meal.
If I ever do go back to La Tourelle, I'll order the foie gras, perhaps a double portion, and maybe a glass of the house wine or a beer.


Ordering at a French Restaurant in Japan

One of my fondest food-related memories is about the restaurant in Bordeaux where my gracious host, a local wine expert, ordered a sequence of bottles to be served, then asked the chef to cook a meal around those wines. With predictably succulent results.

Would I take that same risk in Japan? With one exception (about which, some other time), no. As Hyperfrank points out elsewhere on this website, French restaurants in Japan are (still) too often 70 percent about pretense and 30 percent about food and drink. It's not that the chefs can't cook -- some, in fact, are excellent. It's in the restaurant management's perception of their clientele as well-heeled morons who only want to impress some innocent (?) little girl or a non-suspecting colleague and never complain no matter what you put before them. The groups of OLs you always see at the less expensive French restaurants often know more about food and wine than the average male customer, but treat everything as only an ouverture to their beloved desserts. As these clients, so management believes, can't possibly put together a meal themselves from a-la-carte choices, they need pre-selected set lunch and dinner courses at two or three common price points. And each set course should include as many dainty little portions of a variety of dishes as possible for the money. Reminiscent of a Japanese "kaiseki" meal.

But this insistence on variety naturally distracts from the quality (and quantity) of each dish and is bound to include some things you like, others you could live without, and still others... Also, you don't automatically get a better deal ordering the set course; it's labor-intensive, the timing to have each dish ready at just the right point bocomes tricky, and there are more dishes to wash at the end.

While I'll gladly try out something new, I insist on ordering a la carte. Dinner, except perhaps in prison, should not be a coercive experience. If I want a soup, why should I accept a salad? Why should I have to eat two main dishes, one fish, the other meat? It only makes the wine very hard to choose, and the hors d'oeuvres in most places are much better than the main dishes anyhow. In fact, I have had excellent results ordering two appetizers and perhaps a side dish and no main course at all. The waiters won't love me for that, but they'll remember me.

This preference for picking and choosing goes beyond French restaurants. I apply the same principle to Italian and other western food and even to Japanese eateries. If I want rice, I'll order rice; if not, why should it be wasted on me?

No set courses for me, thank you. My friends' experience at La Tourelle was a good case in point, it seems.

Claus