Wolfgang Puck Cafe, Roppongi, Tokyo

Well, we decided to visit the Christmas "illuminations" (what Japanese people call Christmas lights) last weekend at Roppongi Hills and Tokyo Midtown.  For lunch, we decided to try Wolfgang Puck Cafe, not too far from Hardrock Cafe/Tony Roma's.

To start, it was not crowded at all- on a Saturday!  This made us relieved with two kids in tow.  The hostess kindly sat us near the big screen T.V.  The movie "Corpse Bride" kept the little ones entertained during our meal.

After seating us, due to the lack of customers, I got the impression that the waitstaff had forgotten we were there.  We flagged them down after awhile and placed our order.  To the kids delight, we could order fries on the side in addition to the relatively adult-orientated menu.  The lunch menu is available at WPC even on the weekends (at least Saturday) allowing us to get gourmet fare at a highly discounted price.  Lunch specials are a great deal in Japan and at many restaurants, the lunch fare is nearly identical to the more expensive dinner fare.  In addition to the fries, we ordered and shared the steak lunch, the tartar salmon lunch and the sweet potato pizza as shown in the following pictures.

Continuing with the lunch bargain theme, this meal would easily cost 60-70 dollars (5,000-6,000 yen) had it been dinner.  However, including drinks and a salad, our total was only 3,600 yen, which is about 40 dollars.

The winner of the three dishes was the sweet potato pizza having the ingenuity that made Wolfgang famous.  The pizza was a perfect blend of sweet and savory with the sweet potato, cheese and mayonnaise sauce (as opposed to tomato sauce).   The runner-up was the tartar sauce salmon.  The salmon was perfectly cooked (tender and juicy) and slightly breaded.   The steak was a bit overcooked and tough.  It tasted very good though, well-seasoned.  With the exception of Outback Steakhouse, the beef at most Japanese restaurants that I've eaten at tends to be overcooked.

A member of our party was given a spoon with a piece of food still on it (obviously heat cleaned  through the giant industrial strength dish washer, but there still nonetheless).  For some reason that bothered me a bit, perhaps due to the fact that they took a good deal of time to attend to our table in the beginning.  However, the food was delicious.  As a result, I give the restaurant three and a half howls out of five howls (four for the food, three for the service, averaging three and a half).   I actually eat here for lunch during the weekdays sometimes and it seems that the weekday experience might be a little better.

On a final note, if you look at this picture from the WPC, do you get the impression that Humphrey is gazing at Marilyn's ample cleavage too?  Here's looking at impressive cleavage, kid!