Michelin Star Dining: Cerise by Gordon Ramsay

So not everything I write about here has to be weird of wacky or sub-culture related. I mean, I do other things beyond hanging out at the convenience store or dressing as a zombie sex goat or whatever it is that I'm normally doing on weekends.

This post is a pretty standard, non-wacky thing that I did. I visited Cerise by Gordon Ramsay, the newly Michelin starred fine dining establishment here in Tokyo. Gordon Ramsay actually has two restaurants in Tokyo, Gordon Ramsay at the Conrad and Cerise by Gordon Ramsay (also at the Conrad but whatever) but Cerise is the less expensive of the two.

Anyway, my dining companion and I opted for the course menu which is a three course dinner with an option at each course. For sampling purposes, we got every option so that everything could be tried. I'll review the meal course by course.

Here is the menu listing for the first course:

Click on the picture if it's cutting off for some reason.

Here are pictures of the dishes:

This one is obviously the goat cheese and fig salad. I only sampled this one but it was light and flavorful as well as having a nice contrast between the cheese and the sweetness of the figs.


This one is the ox cheek. Readers of this blog will note that it looks similar to the Mammoth snacks I posted in a different entry. The taste however what a million times better than those. It was a nice savory flavor intertwined with the saltiness of the bresaola. The horseradish cream was actually very subtle in flavor considering the strength of horseradish in general.

Second course menu:

here are shots of the dishes:

This is the sea bream. Actually, I am not a fan of fish in the slightest but I gave this a try just to test if the magic of fine dining could fix my hate of seafood. Nope. Everything that wasn't fish tasted good though but the fishy-ness which wasn't overpowering was still too much for me.

This is the lamb, which I ate. It was spectacular. The lamb was extraordinarily tender and didn't really require a knife for cutting. The bacon and braised lentils rounded out the flavors quite well.

Final course was dessert, which I forgot to take pictures of before eating so the ones below are half eaten. Sorry.

Dessert course menu:


The desserts, in their half-eaten state, look a bit like this:

The tiramisu is essentially an ice cream dessert with various toppings. It was actually quite good. I don't like espresso so I didn't sample it with the topping but the ice cream was delicious.

What I ate was the apple dessert. It was bavarian cream, which is delightful but I wasn't overly impressed with the ultra strong sour apple flavor of the crushed ice on top. It wasn't bad at all but it probably could have served the overall flavor better if it used some kind of fresh apple instead. Just my opinion though.

Overall, the dinner was great. The restaurant itself was relatively empty and the staff was very attentive and helpful. The cost per person was about $60, not including drinks (expect to add a lot more if you drink a lot) which makes it not terribly expensive in terms of fine dining. I'd recommend a visit if you are into delicious food in a high class atmosphere.