French Kitchen — Restaurant in Tokyo

Avoid this restaurant. Even without the upcharge for eating at the hotel, the experience rated as substandard. Before I get to the severely undercooked lamb, I'll break down the whole experience. It took almost 15 minutes to get our drinks, which were essentially just alcohol and a mixer and required no mixology to create. There were zero other bar orders filled during this time (I could see the bar). After our appetizers were served, we were finally brought some napkins, and then we had the pleasure of waiting for another 30 minutes for our entrees, while served a slow diet of moderately decent bread. When my lamb finally arrived, i was surprised to find it essentially raw, given that in the 30 minutes we waited, you could have actually cooked it to medium rare under a heat lamp. The manager was apologetic, and he returned the lamb to the kitchen and then brought it back about five minutes later, and I'm fairly certain they just kept it in the kitchen for five minutes and re-served it without actually doing anything to it. The meat was mealy and still basically raw. Then we received the bill, which had an 18 percent "service charge" on it. It was explained to us that they didn't accept tips, but apparently a mandatory service charge does not count as a tip. Of course, that doesn't explain the "tip" optional line that was also on our bill. We asked for the service charge to be removed, because this wasn't service that would have rated a tip for a $20 meal, let alone one that still ran about $130 (19,000 yen) after adjustments. We didn't even eat our desserts, I really just wanted to leave at that point. If we hadn't been so tired and hungry from a day of sightseeing, we may have just left at some point mid-meal.

The lobster bisque was reasonable. Definitely the high point, but hardly making it worth the trip. Everything else ranged from average to downright bad. Like I said, avoid this restaurant. I don't like leaving bad reviews, but this was beyond the pale.

Update - the next morning - I am still incredibly annoyed at this restaurant. And since I hope this can be a teachable moment (assuming they ever read this) - when you offer someone a free drink in exchange for bad service, it makes them feel like they are simply trying to get something for free, and does not really address the problem. A better way to handle it is to apologize and remove the offending item from the bill, without "offering" to do it, because that carries an uncomfortable implication. It makes you feel ashamed to complain because it has made it about the money. Let me be very clear here - the food was bad. It was undercooked. Twice. The service was bad. It was slow, untimely (napkins had to be requested), and unresponsive. I didn't really care about any adjustments to the bill, I just wanted it to be better. And I wanted it to seem like someone actually cared, and not like I was just some tourist looking for a $20...

My friend took me for the Halloween themed afternoon tea for my birthday. The sweets were quite good although the savoury options were a mixture, some good and the rest dry and not fresh. The female waitresses that explained the options, brought food, tea etc were welcoming, polite and friendly, although no one came to check if we needed tea refill or if we wanted drinks which was a bit hard to get their attention. Then one brought the bill to the table with a simple “here’s the bill”.

My friend and I kept chatting and enjoying the food until a male waiter suddenly turned up and everything went downhill. “The bill please, it’s 5 o’clock!” he said quite aggressively and left. We were a bit shocked since we hadn’t had any interaction with him and everyone else had been soft spoken and polite. We handed the card but commented about the timing since my friend thought we had 2 hours and nobody warned us prior to our time limit like and all the other places we’ve had afternoon tea. The waiter heard us as he was using the till behind us so had to make his point saying to my friend that if she checked the website she should’ve known it’s 90min on weekends not 2hrs and that they were very busy for dinner in a harsh way and making lots of hand gestures (he sounded Italian or similar -Rosso might’ve been his name?) while my friend and I looked at each other and both thinking “what’s happening?” Basically blaming us for his stress but how was I supposed to know if I didn’t book and my friend didn’t remember if she booked weeks in advance? I had like 2 sweets and 1 savoury option left which I tried to have a bite of each quickly but couldn’t enjoy as, quite frankly, I was afraid the waiter was going to come back and kick us out. This super rude waiter kind of ruined the whole experience. This could’ve been avoided if they warned us that the timing was close so I could’ve enjoyed all my meal and left in a timely manner. And obviously this waiter should learn some customer service skills specially working at the Grand Hyatt and Japan as I would’ve expected a much, much...

Couple weeks back we came here for their: The French Kitchen’s Crab and Roast Beef Semi-Buffet Dinner with Seasonal Desserts

There is absolutely nothing negative that I can say about our unforgettable night gorging ourselves for 3+ hours!

The king crab- so delicious. You have no idea how much 800g of crab this really is. My wife could not finish even half of hers, so I helped her out.

The roast beef- I swear I must have gone up 6 times, getting 2 slices each time. Such a high quality beef- it was so tender, so tasty, and perfectly cooked (bloody rare in the middle sections). The sauces they had made it too difficult to choose from so I tried them all. And they were really great.

The softshell crabs - of these were off the hook, soooo good! Can't count how many I downed, but I know it was an obscene amount.

The remainder- they also served some salads and a crab gratin pasta dish which was good. But had to concentrate on the beef and crabs because there was only so much you can eat when eating at an all you can eat buffet.

The desserts were very yummy and had just enough room left to do some damage in this department as well.

The level of service was incredible. The quality of food was unreal. This was our first time coming here for a buffet, and it will not be our last! I can't wait to see what their next...