Sezanne

I was recently invited to a pre-opening lunch at Sezanne, the new French restaurant located in the Four Seasons Hotel next to Tokyo Station. If the real meals are anything like the trial lunch we ate it won’t be long before Sezanne has a Michelin star. I’m not really a big fan of French cuisine, and I don’t know a lot about it, probably because I rarely eat it, at least French French cuisine rather than wa-fu French (Japanese-style French), which I do enjoy. But this was good, with a few outstanding items as well as one very not French thing: No wine in the wine glasses!

Our meal was in the middle of the latest of a seemingly never-ending series of coronavirus pandemic restrictions, which meant no alcohol could be served. It is also why we were there at noon for lunch rather than in the evening for dinner. Instead of wine pairings with our food our dishes were paired with tea, mostly from Taiwan. It was interesting and made me think we were perhaps dining in Saudi Arabia and not Japan. But there was some alcohol for us to enjoy; in some of the sauces, a couple of which we ordered refills of.

One of the highlights for all of us was the bread, a sourdough made with freeze dried corn from Okinawa, each slice served standing on edge with a very rich butter from France. Chef Daniel Calvert said there is a different butter from Normandy he has not yet been able to get his hands on that is even better, if that can be believed.

One interesting dish was the finale, ezo shika (venison) from Hokkaidō. Although I haven’t eaten any beef in over forty years, I did formerly eat venison back in Oregon that friends had hunted. This venison tasted very different, with no gamey-ness (which I like), probably because it was likely farm raised and not wild.

Now that I think about it, Sezanne’s cuisine is to a certain extent wa-fu French as many if not most of the ingredients are sourced from throughout Japan. The preparation, however, is much more classical French than what is often found in Japan.

I need to go back again soon, only when there is wine to enjoy as pairings. The tea was cool—and all served chilled—but it wasn’t wine. Alas.