A note on the words: ceviche is raw fish cured in citrus juice, a South American dish rather than a Thai one. Tamarind is the sour brown pod used across Southeast Asia to give a dish its acidity, and turmeric is the yellow root that colors a curry. Massaman is the mild, sweet-spiced Thai curry that leans on cinnamon, cardamom and peanuts; green curry and red curry are named for the color of the chiles pounded into their paste. Singha is a Thai lager. Shungiku is the leaf of the edible chrysanthemum, bitter and aromatic, and maitake is the frilly hen-of-the-woods mushroom. Madai is red sea bream, the fish most prized in Japan. Wagyu names the Japanese cattle breeds whose meat is heavily marbled.
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SAAWAAN BISTRO on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hey, this is Hangover Meshi. Azabudai Hills, the place everyone’s talking about! I felt a bit late to it, but I’ve finally come to have a look! The build of it feels much the same as Roppongi Hills or Toranomon Hills. It’s enormous and it’s really hard to work out which building the thing you want is in, so you get lost straight away, ha. Mind you, I remember thinking Roppongi Hills was impossible too, and once I got used to it that turned out to be nothing, so time will presumably sort it out. Anyway, since we were here, lunch at Azabudai Hills! Off to the restaurant floor.
There’s all sorts, but the one that caught my eye as looking stylish was “SAAWAAN BISTRO,” so in I went.
Inside it feels faintly exotic. The view is very good ^^
BISTRO SET 3,550 yen
Ah, I see.
Here’s where a misunderstanding I’d been carrying all along came to light. The place says bistro on the sign, so I’d assumed it was something Western-European, but it seems to be Thai food. Lunch is the 3,550 yen set and nothing else. You can add a soup for 1,550 yen and I wanted to, but they’d run out, so I had to give that up!
The main dish can be chosen from the list below, and in the end I went for the grilled madai.
- Grilled madai (red sea bream), turmeric sauce
- Sauteed chicken, Thai ginger and basil sauce
- Duck breast, green curry sauce
- Maitake and mushroom red curry
- Grilled wagyu, massaman sauce (+330 yen)
So — a cold beer to start. Singha on draft isn’t something you see often, is it! Good stuff!
The salad that comes with the set.
Cilantro, and shungiku! I love strongly scented herbs, so this makes me very happy ^^
Crisp fresh vegetables, the Thai-style dressing is good too, and altogether a very satisfying salad. Incidentally, it seems they’ll leave the cilantro out if you don’t like it, so all you cilantro-haters can relax!
Ceviche feels Peruvian, doesn’t it. Like a marinade with a sour edge. Delicious!
Grilled vegetables. The sauce at the front is the tamarind, and it’s a slightly sweet one.
The grilled vegetables are straightforwardly good, and somehow they carry a fair bit of main-course weight, which makes them very satisfying.
Something like five-grain rice, and the plain kind. The style is that you share it around the table.
And this is the grilled sea bream.
Well now — I ordered it on the theory that since the place calls itself a bistro the grilled fish ought to be good, and that was exactly right!
The sea bream is grilled just so and the soft flesh is irresistible! The turmeric isn’t all that strong — it drifts in softly. Underneath the sauce there’s — what is it? Rice noodles, maybe? — laid down, and honestly it would stand up on its own without the rice. Delicious!
Incidentally, this is the grilled wagyu with massaman sauce.
The wagyu plate looked really good too!
So — there’s a Thai character to it, but there’s a bistro quality as well, which makes for a genuinely new experience. The atmosphere is very good, and everything that came out was delicious. I found myself wanting to come back for dinner and just order wine like a normal person.
SAAWAAN BISTRO (Thai / Roppongi-itchome Station, Kamiyacho Station, Azabu-juban Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.7
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
