Goutte de Raisin — Restaurant in Tokyo

This is a cute little French restaurant in that cute area of Shinjuku that has lots of little restaurants and shops. I had high hopes for this place, the reviews are pretty good, the venue looked decent, and in Tokyo there is no shortage of chefs who can do decent European food. However, having tried the restaurant, I would never go back.

I admit, part of the problem may have been my lack of attention. I thought I had made a reservation for Sunday evening, but when we arrived the chef greeted us and stated that our reservation was actually for Tueseday – my bad. The restaurant is very small, but there was only one other table of two people in the restaurant so the chef accommodated us despite our mistake. The ambiance is cute, small, but cute – however I quickly noticed that aside from the chef there was no other staff in the restaurant. We sat down and began looking at the menu, and after choosing items, we were informed that the restaurant’s “system” is that everyone has to order the same thing (in fact we had to clarify this point a few times because it was rather confusing). Basically, because there is only one chef in the kitchen we all had to order the same appetizers and same main. This was disappointing. I quickly also realized that this was going to be a loooooong dinner (it ended up being 2.5 hours). We ordered an assortment of 3 appetizers that the chef made a portion for each person at our table. In the meantime, a woman showed up (they may be a married couple), and she began to take over serving us. She kindly brought us an amuse bouche and as she set the food down she said it was complimentary because the food was going to take long.

We eventually got our appetizers of salmon and avocado, lamb, and a little bit later basically what can only be described as fish and vegetable tempura. Everything was good, although my husband’s lamb was way fattier than the rest of ours and really didn’t have much meat on it. The avocado and salmon was totally fine, as was the tempura, but nothing really creative. We also ordered salads, that came in a parfait style, while the vegetables were fresh I didn’t care much for the dressing, and overall regretted ordering it. Our main course of veal eventually came, the sauce and the flavor was good, but while most of the pieces were tender some of them were really hard to cut with a butter knife (they didn’t provide steak knives).

Overall, I wanted to like this place, and perhaps we messed up the system by not paying attention to what day we actually made the reservation for, but I also think the chef’s system is a bit impractical. And while the presentation was great, the flavors were average and I was not that impressed. If you want to try this place, definitely make a reservation so the restaurant knows how many ingredients they are going to need. Service was overall very good, although they really need one more staff member, it appears from other reviews sometimes there is a waiter – but there was no waiter there the night we went. I feel bad not being able to give the restaurant a stellar review, as they were nice people and service was generally pretty good – however, there are just too many quicks about this place which prevent me from talking the...

The restaurant is cozy and you will feel good and comfortable thanks to the Chef and his waiter. They were very friendly, they knew their food and its origin. They try their best to describe the food they are serving and to accommodate their customers. The food was a great combination of produces. Try their risotto with truffles and foie gras. It was fantastic. Their burger with foie gras and the vegetable parfait were also very surprising and tasty.

I came here to celebrate my birthday and they got me a surprising desert. I was very happy. The waiter was singing with a tenor voice the happy birthday song. What a surprising twist to this...

We had the perfect meal here tonight, amazing food. Every course stood out on its own as well as also complimenting the other courses that followed. The food was subtle and delicious, with a great depth of flavor and stunning presentation. The owners were so welcoming and friendly and the atmosphere intimate and warm. A perfect end to our perfect holiday in Japan!...