Piacere - Tokyo Restaurants

Food always on the table (Mon, Feb 15, '10): Piacere is the high-end Italian restaurant on the 28th floor of the Shangri-la hotel in the Nihonbashi/Tokyo/Otemachi area. 5 star quality for the decor. With its 20 foot+ high ceilings, magnificent view from the 28th floor and the dark and romantic setting, it's everything you would expect from a restaurant in a 5 star hotel. 5 stars again for the service. Very friendly staff that spoke English and again, what you would expect from a high-end restaurant (example: my wife loves rose champagne but doesn't drink a lot so she just wanted one glass. There wasn't any rose bottles in their bucket of champagnes that they serve by the glass so they opened up a full bottle of rose especially for her to pour her one glass.) They also have a 10% service charge but they treat you like royalty there so it was well worth it. What we were really impressed with was the value. Something you may not expect at a fancy restaurant. We ordered the 10,000 yen course. That's 2 appetizers, one pasta, one main, one dessert and coffee/tea. Plus, they threw in a lot of free food. The amazing bread, of course, but also two amuse buche, a dessert before the dessert and small sweets to go with your coffee (i.e. macarron, small chocolates, etc...) One thing to watch out for. The bill rises fairly quickly if you go for the add-ons. Our champagne was 2,500 yen per glass (but it was amazing - I had the new baron rothchilds and it was excellent), the prosciutto, freshly sliced, to go with the champagne was 1,300 yen per plate and their special herbal tea was 800 yen. I still gave 5 stars for value since you can do without the add-ons if you choose and it still wouldn't affect the enjoyability of the meal. I only awarded four stars for food because I was stupid and ordered the venison and it was gamey (if I ordered the wagyu like my wife, it would have scored 5 stars easy). Bottom line: this is our new favourite Italian restaurant in Tokyo. We are definitely going back. It's just a matter of when.