A work event. Restaurants selected for work events make me skeptical. Even if they’re good restaurants, they’ll struggle to make and serve to a large group in a way that does justice to the food. Yet another thing that makes me skeptical is ‘Dining Bars’, which I’ve come to think of as Tokyo’s Applebee’s – living room extensions that happen to offer mediocre food, often in a funny environment. So the cards were stacked against this place.
Pin’s concept (or conceit, if you like) is ‘Crystal Dining’. That means they feature a lot of things in crystal bowls. Like stewed intestines (‘French style’, whatever that means!). This, I think, is pure pandering to girls who can afford to dine there in groups in order to feel luxurious. It’s pretty weird, actually, to see a crystal bowl boiling away on a gas burner. Another crystal item is the flaming chicken, which our group of 25 had several platters of. They wheeled the platters in on a cart to show off the roasted chicken pieces, then soused each with brandy and flamed it. The rest of the food was basically Italian – some prosciutto, some pickles, salad, fritta.
I like salt. I believe that it only causes blood pressure problems in a smallish part of the population, and anyway it makes everything taste good. But this place was out of control with the salting. The mushroom pasta and the flamed chicken were tongue-burningly salty. My boss, who’s from southern northeast Japan (南東北, I love this expression and deeply wish there was a 西南東北 somewhere in Japan), at first said “Ahhh, this is so nostalgic! People from my area put too much salt on everything!” and a little later said “This sucks.”
Lemme stop there. The less said about this place, the better. Save your pennies and go somewhere else.
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