Bistro Le Midi, Kagurazaka

It’s truly a shame that I went to the best bistro first when I started this little Kagurazaka project; Le Midi might have seemed pleasant or even good-quality a few weeks ago. At this point, it’s just OK. The Provencal flourishes and wood on the exterior are cool though.

And the sushi cooler on the counter makes me laugh! I wonder if he got that from a sushi-ya that was closing (his own?) or if he just thought it would be a good idea to show the day’s prepared foods. Incredibly, the lunch staff was the chef and two women; I guess one was helping cook while the other served, but three staff here seemed like a recipe for…eh, probably just supporting the family.

Y1k lunch is a small soup (pumpkin-daikon-cream, nice idea), a small salad, and your choice of various main plates. The signature is the duck mince-and-renkon hamburger, but I got the sauteed fish. Health. Today was some sea bass and some soi (I can’t find an English name for soi. One place says ‘black rockfish’, which doesn’t sound real, and another says ‘mebaru’, which is also Japanese, but I just think of soi as ‘that thing by the fire at Okajouki‘.), both fried a little heavily and with sauce, homey but not bad. The vegetables deserve an honorable mention for being cooked well and differently (i.e., I think there was cumin on the cauliflower, and the cabbage-bacon-cheese sautee was tasty). The pear tart is an extra Y200 and tasted a lot like canned pears even though I’m sure it wasn’t, this being pear season and all. The brown puddle tasted for all the world like chocolate and blue cheese, and once I had that thought, I didn’t even want to know what was really in it.

We soldier on.
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