kitajimatei

My Uncle recommended Kitajima-​Tei to me when I visited Tokyo for a one-​week vacation. While planning for my trip, and what delicacies to eat, I was surprised that he suggested this French restaurant in the middle of nowhere.
The restaurant is very difficult to locate, I probably walked by it four times before noticing the sign. That said, the restaurant itself was very small and seats approximately 15 people.
We had our coats hung up in their closet, and when they realized we were foreigners, the servers had a slightly panicked expression on their faces. We found out why, the menu was only available in Japanese (see picture).
This is when I must commend the entire staff here for their effort in making our dining experience satisfactory. None of them really spoke English, so had extreme difficulty in explaining the menu to us. The chef came out with his cookbook to even show us pictures of each dish, then finally Google Translate saved our butts!
We opted for a set menu (with an abundance of options) for around $ 120CAD per person. The set menu choices offer the same dishes but is priced based on the portion you’d like. So my skinny friend only paid $ 90 for herself!
Dishes that really stood out was the Uni Consume (cold soup like dish with sea urchin in the center). The steak was cooked to perfection although they didn’t ask us how we’d like it cooked, it was a perfect medium rare. The dessert cart was HUGE — Each person chose two desserts and when it arrived at the table, it was quite a sight!
The best part was that the server would come by our table, smile, nod, then show me his phone where he typed in Google Translate — «How is Everything» in Japanese, and we would give him a thumbs up, and he would giggle and walk off. This happened several times throughout the course of our meal. I loved our server, he was too cute!
When we packed up our dessert to go, they gave us extra pastries and 6 oranges (not sure if oranges are symbolic of anything). The head chef came out along with the sous chef to shake our hand and thank us for coming to their restaurant, walked us all the way out the street and bowed deeply, not looking up until we were far enough.
So my absent-​minded friend left her phone charger at the restaurant. Within 5 minutes of leaving, we hear that cute waiter yelling and sprinting down the street waving her charger in the air. We thanked him and was about to turn and leave, when he took two more oranges out of his pocket and handed them to us (Again, I was quite confused if this was some sort of Japanese custom). He bowed deeply and didn’t look up until we were out of sight.
NO PLACE WILL EVER BEAT THE CUSTOMER SERVICE EXEMPLIFIED HERE. We were totally wowed by how well we were treated by people who couldn’t even speak English. I highly recommend anyone visiting Tokyo to come here, but be prepared to use Google Translate!