Fancy Christmas Dinner

This year my husband and I went to a fancy Italian restaurant on Christmas Eve. The restaurant had a really nice Japanese-style garden that was nice to look at but unfortunately they did not have a lot of Christmas decorations in the restaurant so there was not much of a Christmas atmosphere.

They had a special Christmas menu, that consisted of a few appetizers, a fish dish, a pasta dish, and a meat dish. The food was really good and of high quality but also didn’t feel a lot like Christmas for me because it was rather different compared to what we eat for Christmas in Germany.

Personally, I really liked the dessert that was a pistachio Mt. Blanc Cake. It was the first time I ate a freshly made Mt. Blanc Cake as I usually only buy them at cake stores.

The fresh one tasted amazing. It was filled with strawberry ice and chocolate cake. It came with a small bowl filled with a liquid that you were supposed to smell. I first thought it was a sauce but according to the waitress, it was only for the smell. It smelled like gingerbread so finally there was something that felt like Christmas.

The Christmas menu cost 12.000 Yen per person and with drinks, we paid a little less than 40.000 Yen for two persons. That is not cheap and you could also do a weekend trip for that money.

The food was really nice but I also had nice food in cheaper restaurants before. So I guess you don’t need to spend so much money. As I had never been to such an expensive restaurant before it was a nice experience but I guess I will not repeat it too soon.

Also, both my husband and I had stomach issues after the meal. That probably is a common problem with Christmas food but I guess we are not made for expensive fancy foods.

All in all the dinner was nice but lacked a Christmas atmosphere. I hope that next year we can spend Christmas with my family in Germany but if we end spending Christmas in Japan again I would like to find a restaurant, that was a Christmas tree and decorations to get a Christmas feeling. It does not necessarily have to be an expensive one.

How do you spend Christmas when you are in Japan? Do you know a restaurant that provides a Christmas feeling close to Christmas at home?