AUX BACCHANALES YOKOHAMA (オーバカナル 横浜) — Restaurant in Yokohama

This restaurant might claim to be French but I don’t believe any French chef with any self respect would ever go here or claim it’s menu to be theirs.

The salad was of huge leaves and no real effort to toss it so the vinaigrette dressing could coat it.

The complimentary bread was good but did not come with butter. I had to ask for some and it costs extra. Said butter arrived hard as a rock, meaning it was useless for putting on bread. It’s not that difficult to make whipped butter or even to simply keep some fresh at room temp for ease of use.

The roast beef dish was a disaster. It was covered by wilted greens in some shabby attempt to hide it’s shame. The meat wasn’t seasoned — I had to ask for salt and pepper in an attempt to try — and it’s supposed sauce over it was likewise tasteless with an aftertaste of sugar, making it sweet-tasting and not the savoriness I was hoping for. The beef was sat atop a small pile of cabbage that was over-boiled and equally unseasoned.

The “lemon tart” (which was in fact lemon meringue pie, because the Japanese apparently cannot tell the difference) was not freshly made and had obviously sat in the refrigerator display case for a long time. [Edit: after asking the staff, they confirmed that the pie crust was made in a factory and then shipped to the restaurant. That explains quite a bit.]

Weirdly, even though I ordered ice tea, it didn’t come with my meal but with my dessert instead.

The only thing that I honestly enjoyed was the baguette that came complimentary with the meal. Gordon Ramsay would have choice words for the kitchen staff of this restaurant, although it is par for the course of Japanese-European dining: everything looks good on the outside, and that’s about it.

The wait staff were kind and very attentive. They are the ones who kept this review from being a 1/5...

One of my favorite French bistro chains around Tokyo, which happens to be reasonably priced, with a polite staff that graciously leaves you alone in your darkened corners to enjoy yourself at a leisurely pace, only showing up when need be.

I decided to give this newer Yokohama outpost a try, and the ambience was as comfortable and familiar as ever. My group had tea and coffee and desserts, which was all fine, but suffered from the same issues as most of this chain's other outposts: many of the tarts and such are kept in an icebox, and not brought to room temperature before serving…

The result is a walnut tart that tastes of the refrigerator in which it was stored, or a pear tart too chilled to enjoy the subtleties of its flavor. They're not bad at all, but they could be so...

I came to the restaurant portion for lunch, had an omelette and a steak+fries. The bakery part has a nice selection of bread, but the restaurant serves some well-cooked French-style dishes. I recommend lunch since the prices are more reasonable. Also I hope it's just a lunch thing where they plonk the wooden menu on your table because it's so awkward today have it there until you order. Anyway, the omelette was terrific, and the bechamel was worth it. The steak and fries were also well-cooked. My only point for improvement is to use better meat (grass-fed from New Zealand please) and it would've probably...