Le Bistrot de L’Echanson has the spacious interior and elegant decor that Tokyo diners prize in a French eatery. The bright room is unpretentious, with an attractive marble bar at one end and a semi-open kitchen at the other. Yet for a Tokyo hotel restaurant—and a French one at that—l’Echanson’s prices are extremely reasonable. Prix fixe menus start at just ¥3,500, while most entries on the small but diverse wine list are well under ¥10,000.
We started with a bottle of Château de Parenchère (¥6,000), a decent Bordeaux that we managed to enjoy even after the waiter spilled some of it on the thick white tablecloth. Doing our best to ignore this mishap while making our way through a basket of soft wheat bread, we checked out the two-page food menu and settled on a special summer course (¥3,500) and the “Menu Etoile” (¥4,200). Both included an appetizer, main dish and dessert, and for the more expensive course, we were able to choose from half a dozen selections of each.
First to arrive was an hors d’oeuvre of chilled cauliflower mousse and tomato jelly, drizzled with dark vinegar that gave it an agreeable bite. Next came the appetizers: a homemade pâté with herb salad (à la carte ¥1,800) and a sigh-inducing artichoke casserole. This latter, served en cocotte with tender artichoke hearts and aromatic cheese, had us mopping up the remnants of the salty, buttery sauce with our bread, wishing there was more.
The main dishes, too, were well-executed and gorgeously presented—rack of lamb with tapenade cooked extremely rare and accompanied by a slice of basil-crusted potato, and roasted breast of guinea fowl and lobster with “seafood” sauce (à la carte ¥3,200). The petite portions were what you’d expect of nouvelle cuisine, though, so we rounded things out with a cheese plate (¥1,400). The selection included ho-hum Camembert, but also a nice chèvre, pungent Roquefort and a semi-hard Cantal.
As the Sunday evening wore on, the crowd of mostly foreign hotel guests picked up, and a few of them ordered another dish that had piqued our interest: conger et pommes de terre frites (¥1,400)—French-style “fish and chips,” which was served in a small casserole. Our desserts, meanwhile, included fantastic semi-sweet rhubarb oreillettes (a kind of fritter), but unfortunately the coffee was served with plastic tubs of non-dairy creamer. Tres déclassé.
Other than that misstep, l’Echanson hit all the right notes, and we walked away extremely satisfied—and, better yet, with our wallets intact.