As usual, jump out at the Crossing.

Then follow Google to a side street where Roppongi suddenly disappears and you feel as though you’ve just teleported into the heart of Nishi-Azabu. At once all the neon trash has perished and all of a sudden you find yourself in a kind of dollish, super-luxury place. In front of you there’s something like a Reception House or a wedding agency. It’s all covered in roses and trees, with some lamps at the corner. Right after it there’s a hipster row bar with a wall that is open towards the street. There’re mansions and shops all around, which make you wanna be an elementary particle and enter all of them at the same time, though with a slightly different probability distribution.

Ok, and where’s our client?

Right here! Exactly this concrete wall à la Tadao Ando (everyone’d better fucking learn that it was he who first began to use polish concrete with formwork’s dots for the purpose of decoration – and not any hipsters whatsoever!). The place has a narrow horizontal opaque window, a door and modest small letters of «le sputnik».

We come in and face a lovely hostess, then we proceed to the hall of six tables, one of which can be turned into a separate office — this is Japan, after all!

And here comes the first artifact: an empty round table for four people, located in the corner and fully occupied by an army of the polished glasses. There’re several dozens of them, of all colors and types. Meanwhile the place is packed and you have to make a reservation in advance, long before the visit. “Well, first of all, it is just beautiful (c)” — A very Japanese thing!

A lovely paper on the table explains that “sputnik in Russian…”

“We’re Russians!”

“Oooh… you’re our first Russians!”

ffwd>>> our friends come in a day:

“You’re also Russians, aren’t you? Like that couple yesterday? Please, don’t drink as they did, they’ve drunk almost all our wine.”

Oh, please! Quite not so! You’re a dirty liar! But, of course, we did have some wine…

We get a set and a wine pairing.

And off we go!

It’s general opinion that the Japanese never invent anything on their own; they just pass the object they’re interested in through the filter of their tremendous culture. For example, let’s take Disney animation films: they bring it to the verge of absurdity/perfection, and the result of it is anime.

The same thing often happens to the kitchen: traditional Portuguese tempura has very little to do with the incredible objects that you might come across here.

This restaurant’s actually French… but this is Japan, after all!

The food wins you over thick and fast, throwing delicious compliments and courses at you!

There’s a point in the middle of the dinner, when you have to make a break: a pancake with mushrooms, truffle and fermented egg literally knocks you off the race by an unfair trick because it possesses all the supreme tastes in itself and drives them all into you in one blow.

At a certain moment, the set reveals the Japanese ability to branch out: in this manner, foie gras is divided into a cold signature foie rose and some normally looking hot foie gras.

Then there was some “foodporn” with chocolate fondant.

And some sorbet.

But this all doesn’t even matter. What’s essential is to leave the Station, having launched “Le Sputnik” into the sky, but keeping to yourself the flavor splinters that have appeared in your palate at least until the morning.

Do enjoy!