Well, first of all, it is beautiful!

To begin with, you have to call there a week before you plan to visit. It will be even better if you entrust it to people at Park Hyatt or else, this will surely be more efficient.

They managed to find us a free table at 18.00 only on one of four days.

Then, you’d definitely better come with some Chinese people, but we came without any, call us the brave ones.

If you are not supported by any Chinese, remember that for the Chinese there is only one type of people who they treat humanly – the Chinese.

The first thing that strikes your attention is the Chinese hyper glamour. The interior is fucking awesome. For example, at the turn to the restroom there’re clouds with huge rhinestones hanging from the ceiling. I’m really talking about the huge ones! A fucking sky with diamonds.

Something incredible is going on at the next tables, where on the extremely beautiful plates, which in their turn are served on stub cuts, stones, hydrochloric bars, etc they bring you SOMETHING. And this something smells all over the huge hall to the extent that your stomach, being really hungry, starts to suffer from a severe cramps. I mean it smells delicious, if someone didn’t get it right.

Next. There’s a grossbuch on the table, which consists of about 150 pages and is made of some very expensive A1 size semi-cardboard – the menu. The first part is plain text, then there comes the food list provided chapter by chapter large pictures. The pictures can easily go for a finely illustrated catalog.

We sit down, we are being slow, we are looking at the book.

In the end, we ordered a duck and a little bit of everything (oh well, here everything means about 5 percent of the entire “repertoire”).

Ok, the duck. As usual, a special person performs its posthumous execution on a separate table. He’s waving a huge knife and cutting the duck into pieces, each time with one swipe (by the way, the duck is tremendous).

You receive it in three stages: first classic, then they make a duck burger with hollow buns, and finally you get wings/legs. THIS IS SO FUCKING DELICIOUS! I’ve gobbled up a lot of Peking ducks in my life and, judging by the infinite serving of them in this place, this is what it is famous for.

Afterwards we had some “less familiar” stuff, but not less tasty: starting from foie gras in disguise of Nanking cherry and up to wagyu with violets. Except for the calories, everything was superb.

A plate of jiaozi is a separate case. It was so very close to what I know from my childhood, to the Muscovite homemade dumplings, molded by my mom.

Generally speaking, this was a remarkable experience.

Do enjoy!

In the narrow alley running down from “Central” with a sudden marble pavement resembling a white “quay” built in it (20 meters of this artifact is the entrance of a neighboring hotel which continues down along the door/windows of the restaurant), behind the huge, beautiful street doors in kind of art deco style, with green lamps everywhere, and having an unexpectedly reserved interior exists THE ONE.

Our hero.

The menu is a double-page spread. Very simple wine card. Tasty cocktails. A set is just … 310 Liras (indeed, it is possible to eat full in here even for two (sic!)

We get a set (afterwards we won’t stay there and will finish off with one of the main courses).

Probably, you, just like me, have always wanted to eat all those Turkish simple stuff, but hyper fat components and conscience would each time stop you halfway with an unchewed hummus roll in your mouth.

Indeed, here it is literally possible to reach the peak of one’s career.

Everything is in small portions and is made to be really light, ++ accompanied by a heap of thin components like seaweed, fresh peas with baked yogurt, etc.

Everything is multilayered, and I’m not talking about the texture – it is mainly solid – something-in-super-sauce™.  I mean the flavor: at once slightly sweet, sour, and a bit spicy. All that in one spoon – and that’s the norm for this place.

Besides, I remember hummus-remixed and some ravioli – fuck knows whether they are Turkish type or whatever (both positions are in the set).

«Meat — bouillabaisse»™ comes as a separate attachment (bearing some other name, of course) – braised beef on the bone from which the meat’s falling off and the fibers are literally scattering around having drown in the infernal broth.

To be eaten STRICTLY with a tablespoon for catching the sinking ones from the broth (and yes fuck off these calories!) — at the same time extremely meaty, slightly sweet – barely noticeable, piquant and oily.

In short, it’s Turkey, though a light version of it. Yet «it has nothing to do with sashimi» (c).

A bouncy ball rolling out of the resto almost for free (two persons), + 2 cocktails, + a bottle of decent sparkling wine, and great mineral water in blues glass, which could probably be used for making a plafond for a sconce.  In total: $170 (the check’s attached).

Do enjoy.

It turns out that entropy can be defeated after all. Otherwise, how would you explain the perfectly whole mussels (you’d be fucking sick and tired of trying to open them, just like oysters) that inside have…the damn risotto!

And there’s a very lonely mussel lying on top of it.

And it’s looking at you.

There’s an infernal crowd, heaps of mussels, “a hole in the wall”; it all really looks like a bazaar/train station. And suddenly there appear some fashionable, bright, carrot-colored cardboard buckets (50 Liras a bucket) full of mussels and with a couple of lemons on top.

I have to tell you straight away that there’s a certain technology of eating them: first you open the shell, next you squeeze some lemon on the rice, and then you eat it using the shell for a spoon (you can feed each other; and it’s really funny to watch the hyper-heterosexual Turks who have beards and physically resemble medium-sized refrigerators do it to each other – feed one another).

I wouldn’t say it’s incredibly tasty. Though it’s tasty enough and it’s rather sort of weird and cool at the same time: to come there and have some stuffed mussels, open them for each other, and eat them with hands – overall, this is a romantic fast food restaurant™.

After several visits in a row to the recommended (rated) seafood restaurants in Istanbul I am convinced that there’s nothing more than touristy, tortured, grilled fish in this city. To a greater or lesser degree, it is cremated and oiled. It’s pretty much the same price, but sometimes fucking expensive for such bad quality.

Every place with “a beautiful view of the Bosphorus” should be fucking rejected at fucking once.

Well, if you don’t want to arrange for yourself a “whatever” and otherwise very expensive night, you should defiantly forget all the beautifully located places. Let the tourists gorge themselves there.

This one is a very simple but never decaying restaurant. It’s slightly away from the tourist paths where houses are rather similar to Tbilisi with their carved wooden balconies, which are actually partly collapsed, but that’s the norm.

The restaurant’s tents/verandahs are wedged in a yard between small hotels, hilly alleyways and roosters/hens ceremoniously walking around and sleekly glistening in the sun. The tablecloths, roses in pails (actually, quite decent ones), a two-page menu and the maximum price of a dish at around 70 Lire should at once put you in the right mood.

The very high quality meze, and in particular the veggie bits, are the best!

The staff, who don’t bother you with foolish inquiries and poor accents, move quickly and pour full glasses of excellent Sauvignon blanc. So, all is well!

The tomato salad is indeed THE TOMATO SALAD; you can see it right away from the picture on the menu.

All the rest is the works. You can see fish/calamari/shrimps cooked in detail.

By the way, they have 10-12 types of fish, so you definitely can have a good time here!

On the whole, this is a simply a good fish restaurant, where we left over $70, truthfully we had a couple of glasses of wine all in all. As a complement we received an awesome dessert made out of who the hell knows what and viscous ice cream. This is a restaurant, which guarantees you an excellent lunch or dinner, without showing off. It’s simply quite a tasty one.

Akira Watanabe was fusion addicted before, but unlike most “haute chefs” who are just fucking around with the one and only purpose of showing off, he always did everything thoughtfully in every minute detail. In Japanese style.

Nothing super vulgar like “sushi with foie gras” (c).

No fusion for the sake of fusion. The moment it gets into your mouth, you clearly realize for what purpose one component has been replaced/complemented with another and why spaghetti Bolognese have been ‘perverted’ in a certain way and so on. All this is understood at the level of reflexes, without any special hints.

In “Above” he is ahead of himself: it is a hypersimple restaurant, located in the hall of a skyscraper, in the atrium, actually in a business center, suitable rather for lunch. Indeed, you don’t mind dragging yourself there over and over again despite all these stupid Toranomon Hills, even if you aren’t staying in Andaz.

This time Japan, Italy and Mexico have met and it is the bomb!

All these Carbonaras 2.1/Bolognese 3.0 pastas are improved in Japanese style by vegetables/root crops, raw mushrooms and lightened foamy sauces.

The salad with guacamole, salsa, and a variety of vegetables and leaves/herbs is something absolutely transcendental (or it’s just me madly in love with guacamole).

In general, everything you get BREATHES as if it was right from the countryside, although you are in the urbanistic center of Tokyo. Dew and tears are pouring from it on the cuts of vegetables, roots and fruit.  The main thing is that it is immensely delicious!

Delicious without any “wind correction” and excuses about it being “just a city food”. All right “just”, but it is a very talented “just”.

I think this is only the beginning! We’ll be keeping an eye on it!

Perhaps, I’m just not acquainted with South Indian cuisine enough and actually all the restaurants that serve it are as awesome as this one. Yet something prompts me that it isn’t quite so.

A little aside from the poshness of Ginza and those backstreets ever-smelling of food and packed with drunken crowds on Alfa Romeo and Rolls-Royces, closer to the ultra-formal Nihonbashi there’s a restaurant. 

Oh well, it’s just like any other restaurant: there’s a door, a pencil case, purple walls… a crowd… Indians that always eat with their hands (?)… an open kitchen(?!).

That’s our place.

To be honest, I’m madly in love with Indian cuisine. I acknowledge several typological items within it: soups, naans, rice, curry, and tandoori.

Again, to tell you the truth, all types of curry are practically the same: okay, chicken tikka masala and lamb in some way differ one from another, yet under a thick dense layer of the super-aromatic sauce all the nuances… mmm… are “slightly lost”.

Only not here.

Whether the Japanese pestered the life out of Indian food, or whether this is the initiative of Indians themselves, but if you order five different types of curry, you will indeed get five DIFFERENT CURRIES. A real wow!

And it comes with all the nuances.

Lemon curry with shrimps should be treated separately. If it’s a local invention, it must be legislatively spread all around the world: shrimps can be fucking thrown away, instead you can put there rice and just really bite into the plate.

And then you may also be willing to lick everything with bread.

There’re some kinds of additives everywhere: the thinnest shavings of yuzu zest, some root crops of the same shape, and, talking about curry, you don’t see any colored liquid there but rather a compound-complex soup; we’d definitely call it soup.

All the rest is also fucking well done. That’s it. FUCKING AWESOMELY cooked. My only regret is that it’s not spicy enough.

There’s always a crowd. There’s a huge crowd for lunch.

Call them.