ASAHINA

I don't know where to begin... what an experience it was when we ate at this fine establishment. Every course beautifully thought out and meticulous. Chef Asahina is a master of his craft, and each dish an art piece. If you are looking for a fine dining experience I would highly recommend coming to Asahina Gastronome. Their dishes, service, and attention to detail was immaculate.

A 10/10 experience. Eat pretty but no extra presentation. Aesthetic but also closely related to each ingredient’s character. Everything tastes delicious. My personal favorite was the abalone and main course veal. Friendly and professional services. Staff all capable of introducing each dish in English. Very private dining room, only 5 tables were served. Great atmosphere. Perfect for formal occasions.

I see nothing but rave reviews for this place on all the sites, and the restaurant not only acquired two Michelin stars for 2024, but got them renewed for 2025, so I'm a bit puzzled why our experience was so different. The tasting menu that was presented to us was awkward, drab, tedious, and ultimately disappointing. Maybe the head chef was on holiday when we visited? It felt a bit like no one was minding the shop, a clumsy simulation of a tasting menu in a Michelin two-star restaurant, rather than the real thing. Since I have a lot of specific comments, I'll list them point by point. Atmosphere: The first thing I noticed when I sat down was how unusually bright the lighting was. The room was decorated rather blandly, all in shades of beige and grey, and would have benefited from softer, moodier lighting. Plating: This was honestly the best thing about the meal. Every dish was artfully and beautifully arranged, as though designed for Instagram. Maybe that's why the light was so bright? Service: Here is where things really started to go wrong. The servers were extremely courteous, but strangely inattentive. This is the kind of place where your bottle of water is stashed all the way across the room, so you have to rely on the staff for refills. In most places this is done promptly and seamlessly, but here my glass sat empty for long enough that I finally turned around to see what was going on, and noticed one of the servers standing behind the water bucket, staring blankly into space. She came over promptly when I gestured to my empty glass, but it's odd that this happened in the first place—not an experience I've had in any other restaurant of this caliber. Wine pairing: The wines were all very nice, but the pours were the kind that I'm used to with a 12- to 24- course menu, not a modest 6-course (with only 5 dishes paired). The pours were so scanty that they had to be stringently rationed to last through each course. No pairings at all were offered with the cheese course or dessert, not even as an optional add-on. A generous wine pairing can go far to lubricate any glitches in a multi-course meal, but this meal was both extremely glitchy and essentially unlubricated by the ameliorating effects of wine. The most startling glitch of all was the timing of the pours. If you dine out a lot, maybe you noticed that scene in the movie /The Menu/ where the food arrives at the table before the wine pairing is poured? When I saw that, I was like, "Hah! That would never happen in a restaurant of this caliber!" I'm still not sure whether the filmmakers were merely ignorant of the proper mechanisms of fine dining, or if was a subtle but deliberate off-note meant to evoke the beginning of the horror plot. Yet at Asahina Gastronome, the food arrived before the wine pairing was poured not once... not twice... but three times in succession—out of only five pairings! I found this incredibly awkward, because I really like to eat my food *with* the wine it is paired with. Isn't that the whole point of a pairing? And so the food would arrive, and I would have to sit staring at it for several minutes until someone finally got around to pouring the wine. For whatever reason, I strongly prefer to take a sip of the associated wine before I taste a given dish, so I can enjoy the pairing *as* a pairing. Is this a weird hang-up? I don't think so, because literally every other restaurant with a wine pairing that I have visited in my life, whether one-, two-, or three- stars or off the Michelin radar altogether, has somehow managed to pour the wine before the relevant dish arrives. Pacing: The pacing of the courses started out fine, apart from the recurring glitches with the wine pairings, but there was a strangely lengthy lapse after the final entree. Things got so slow and dull that I ended up spacing out and reading my phone, and was surprised when my husband commented that a whole hour had elapsed since our previous course. Another half-hour passed, along with an untelegraphed cheese cart, before we even made it to the pre-dessert, much less the dessert itself. I cannot fathom what could have caused such a profound delay. If the meal had simply wrapped up in a reasonable time frame, we would have had a much better experience. Yet when we finally got out of there--after almost four hours for a six-course meal!—I couldn't help but note that we were actually the first to escape. All the other tables that had been seated before us were still stuck there. It was like /The Menu II/, but with death by slow boredom. Food: It was beautifully plated and well-prepared, but... I had a lot of time to stare at it while I waited around for the wine pairings, and I couldn't help but notice that most of the dishes seemed like they wouldn't be harmed by sitting around untouched for another several minutes. That made me wonder how long they'd been sitting around before they got to us. With only a few exceptions, most of the items on the entree plates were cold or room temperature, apparently by design. I was left with the impression that this would be an ideal kind of gourmet cuisine for the first-class cabin of airline.

Lovely dinner. Each dish was lovingly plated and all burst of flavour. Thoughtfully presented and well thought through. Not only in taste but also a play on visuals. Service was great and we totally enjoyed ourselves.