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No hotel bar in Tokyo has quite the reputation as Park Hyatt Tokyo’s New York Bar since it was featured in Sofia Coppola’s ‘Lost in Translation’. But the famous bar isn’t all the five-star hotel has to offer. On the other side of its 52nd floor is the hotel’s New York Grill, where you can splurge on a lavish meal of top-quality seafood, grilled beef and duck fat fries as you gaze out at one of the best views of the Tokyo cityscape.
The a la carte menu is an endless list of goodies ranging from herb-crusted Australian rack of lamb to lobster mac and cheese. However, if you want to experience the best of chef de cuisine Paul Gajewski has to offer, you’ll want to order the seasonal dinner course: From Olive to Beef.
For this sumptuous menu, chef Gajewski – whose previous posts include three-Michelin-star restaurant Noma – travelled to Kagawa to source the finest produce the prefecture has to offer. Located in the south of Japan, Kagawa has a Mediterranean-like climate that makes it ideal for growing olives. And the area has found a surprising use for them.
While many of the olives are pressed into oil, the region also has a solution for the scraps that remain after the oil is extracted. Through mixing the discarded olives into cattle feed, local farmers found that they could improve the flavour and texture of their Sanuki Wagyu. The olive-fed cattle would then fertilise the olive groves, creating a sustainable agricultural cycle for the local crops.
To give diners a taste of what Kagawa Prefecture has to offer, chef Gajewski devised a course menu that begins with an amuse bouche of the humble olive and ending with the tender, beautifully marbled Sanuki Beef. You could dislike olives and still be dazzled by this inventive and brilliantly executed menu, where the natural nuttiness of the fruit hasn’t been spoiled by an overpowering brine.
Rather than predictably incorporating olives by scattering them over dishes, Gajewski has taken a more nuanced approach to combining his ingredients. For one of the courses, he tops Canadian lobster with baby basil and olive oil confit cherry tomatoes, while dessert is an elegant amalgamation of dark chocolate, pistachio chantilly and olive oil ice cream. The citrus-cured salmon with Baeri caviar and the sweetcorn velouté with truffle mousse conchiglie are outstanding, too.
This signature dinner menu is available until August 31. The set of five courses costs ¥23,100 a head, but you can also order four courses (excluding the grilled lobster) for ¥19,800. A wine pairing is available for an additional ¥9,350 (five glasses). You can make your reservation online.
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