Good news or bad news first? Let’s start with the bad. The Brasserie Paul Bocuse Le Musée is in a museum that closes at 6pm. No signs outside herald this first restaurant in Tokyo by Paul Bocuse, one of the world’s most respected chefs. The very difficult-to-find evening entrance is more than 100m from the museum’s front gate, which closes at 6pm. Guards patrol the perimeter with walkie-talkies and red blinking emergency flashlights and question anyone coming up to the gate. This forbidding scene is far from any pedestrian traffic, where nary a potential customer passes by.
Inside the museum, the bad news continues. The brasserie is perched atop an architectural whimsy: a grey concrete ice cream cone. The kitchen is in the basement, and all food is delivered up the cone’s central elevator. And the baguettes are frozen in France, then thawed out and baked here. Gone are the light crumb and crisp, crackling crust.
Oblivious to the dining scene, the museum’s janitorial staff sweep the empty corridors and stack unused chairs in the vast echoing space. The brasserie is, in effect, a museum exhibit of a brasserie. It is dull.
Who is to blame for this joyless situation? The architects? The restaurant management team? The museum? Surely not Paul Bocuse.
Sadly, the food on the plate doesn’t completely make up for the bungled planning and lifeless atmosphere. Some good news is the steak tartar (¥3,300), one of the best in the city. The Japanese beef is excellent—chopped, as it should be. Mixed with egg yolk, shallots, cornichons and capers, it’s served with roasted potatoes and a simple green salad. Complemented by a glass of Chateau Pichon Bellevue, a crisp delicious white Bordeaux (¥1,000), it makes a fine light meal.
One of Bocuse’s trademarks, the soupe de potimarron (pumpkin soup, ¥800), tries hard to satisfy. Presented in a charming copper pot, it’s carefully ladled into your bowl, with a generous helping of crisp croutons standing at the ready. Despite the ceremony, though, the soup is merely okay.
A Lyonnaise specialty, quenelle mousseline de poisson blanc (white fish dumpling, ¥2,600), was very correctly prepared and presented with pink shrimp and dark green spinach in a bisque sauce. Pretty, but again just okay. As was the dessert, a crème brulée (¥900) with a caramelized sugar crust that had known the refrigerator for too long.
On two recent evenings, only a handful of the 60 some tables that ring the circumference of the cone were occupied, mostly by matrons and middle-aged businessmen. Of course, at lunchtime the museum is open and filled with potential customers. The ¥1,800 prix fixe lunch menu offers good value, but the queue starts at 10am.