It is always a pleasure to discover a great new restaurant. Even more so when new means a lot more than just “recently opened” — and when great means brilliant.
L’As is a small place with a young crew and a location that is easy to overlook. But since opening in early February in the backstreets of Minami-Aoyama, it’s been generating the kind of enthusiastic word-of-mouth buzz that bigger names in flashier areas would give their iPads for.
Like its short, punchy name — pronounced “Lass”, it’s French for “ace” — L’As keeps things simple and uncluttered. What catches the eye is not what’s there so much as what has been pared away.
Tokyo has plenty of restaurants with spare, clean-cut, Scandinavian-modern looks and comfortable lightwood furniture. But few go so far as to banish all cutlery from sight. The only objects on your tabletop are a dark rectangular block — this is for your bread — and your linen napkin. You barely notice until the first dish is served. Everything you need is in a drawer cleverly concealed by your right hand.
Ditto with the layout. Open kitchens are dime a dozen in Japan. But at L’As there is no barrier with the dining room. Like at an exclusive chef’s table, you are virtually in the kitchen, watching it all from prep to short order to the final plating. As you’d expect here in Japan, everything moves with quiet, unhurried precision.
The unexpurgated version of my column in yesterday's Japan Times. I'll be posting some more food photos in the next day or so — including Chef Kaneko's amazing foie gras "ice cream sandwich".
Update (Feb: 2013):
I never got around to posting those extra photos. So here at any rate are a few of the foie gras "ice cream sandwich". It's quite something:
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