One thing people might not know about Japan is how popular French food is there.
You can get some of the finest French food and pastries in Tokyo and across the country.
Look at this bakery selection --- and this is in a train station! We were in Kanazawa.
One of the best palmiers I ever had was in Toyko at a neighborhood bakery at the bottom of the escalators where we would go to catch the trains when visiting our ex-pat friends.
So I agree that the pastries are amazing in Japan.
And when we were traveling in 2011, we enjoyed a delicious French meal at Le Midi in the rural tourist town of Takayama. Just to give you an indication of how widespread French food is.
Hiroyuki Sakai is one of the best known Japanese chefs specializing in French cuisine. He is an Iron Chef.
Joël Robuchon is one of the most popular and famous French chefs and restaurant owners in Japan.
There is also a trend for Japanese chefs to open fine restaurants in Paris. Here is an interesting article in Food & Drink about this trend: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7001f030-41eb-11e4-b98f-00144feabdc0.html
You can get some of the finest French food and pastries in Tokyo and across the country.
This is a great article from Bloomberg "Tokyo Tops Paris With More Michelin Stars and Better Food" I found this interesting:
"Choosing his words carefully, he notes that pastry shops in France are having difficulty finding young people willing to put in the time and effort required to learn the craft. He also says that even top French patisseries are now taking shortcuts -- by using stabilizers in their desserts, for instance.
“They are losing the basics,” Sugino says. “It is possible that, 10 or 20 years from now, the French will have lost the art of pastry but that it will live on in Tokyo, in Japan.”
One of the best palmiers I ever had was in Toyko at a neighborhood bakery at the bottom of the escalators where we would go to catch the trains when visiting our ex-pat friends.
So I agree that the pastries are amazing in Japan.
There is also a trend for Japanese chefs to open fine restaurants in Paris. Here is an interesting article in Food & Drink about this trend: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7001f030-41eb-11e4-b98f-00144feabdc0.html
Truly, you can get some of the best food in the world---not just French -- in Tokyo, in Japan.
The fresh ingredients, the attention to detail, the technique, the art of presenting food beautifully, the ceramics, and the service --- I can't wait to go back, just thinking about the food there.
B