If you’re gourmand enough, the food gods will smile upon you and leadeth you into temptation of any restaurant you wish to enter, which often means the ones you think you may never be able to enter. Most notable among these in the fairly recent past are Jamin–later to become Restaurant Robuchon– in the late 1980s and early 1990s (Those old enough may remember the Parisian restaurant anti-American boycott at the time); Restaurant Girardet outside of Lausanne, especially after Morley Safer did a segment for“60 Minutes” about it more than 30 years ago; and more recently elBulli, Can Roca. Noma, Osteria Francescana and Alinea.
Japan is loaded with difficult-to-book restaurants, particularly some of the sushi and kaiseki ones in Tokyo. In planning my recent trip to Japan, a provincial restaurant named Yanagia caught my eye because of its sky-high Tabelog score.
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Diningology 