A note on the words: hamburg is the Japanese hamburger steak, served without a bun. Omurice is fried rice wrapped in omelette, and hayashi is a beef-and-onion sauce close to a demi-glace.
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La Piscine on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Drinkers, thank you for waiting. It is Hangover Meshi time.
Today, a day out at Yomiuriland. It feels like a very long time since I was last here. There is now a working-themed zone called Good Job Attraction, with all sorts of rides made in collaboration with companies. Rather interesting, in fact. And at lunchtime, wondering where to eat, I dropped into the restaurant La Piscine.
There is plenty to eat. The ramen looks good.
But I was fairly hungry, so this time I chose the cheese hamburg and grilled chicken La Piscine plate. The greediest thing on the menu.
Presumably it is called La Piscine because it is by the pool. Why French, though?
You order at the counter and wait for one of those food-court buzzers to go off. A while later it vibrates, which is the signal.
Whenever, wherever: beer.
And here is the greedy plate — cheese hamburg and grilled chicken La Piscine plate. Every single thing on it goes with beer. Bliss.
The cheese melts nicely over the hamburg. The savour of the meat, the depth of the melting cheese and the strong demi-glace-style sauce underneath become one thing, and the satisfaction hits from the first mouthful. That richness is exactly what goes with beer. The hamburg itself is finely minced, plump and soft, the juices seeping out as you chew, and the roundness of the cheese wraps gently around the faint bitterness of the sauce. Classic, and it makes you want beer without thinking about it.
Beside it, grilled chicken in a red tomato sauce you can feel the flesh of. The skin is well seared and the meat is juicy when you bite in. The well-judged acidity of the tomato works cleanly and resets a mouth that has gone rich from the hamburg. Being able to move back and forth between two sauces of such different character — the black demi and the red tomato — is the best thing about this plate.
A little of a lot of things is a specification made for drinkers. Excellent.
And the rice at the centre is a soft, silky omurice scattered with parsley — exactly the parade of favourites one dreamed of as a child. Adding demi and tomato sauce alternately to the omurice as you go keeps it from ever getting dull and keeps the satisfaction high. The fresh salad gives the flavours some light and shade so it never gets too heavy, and it stays good to the end. This sort of greedy Western-food plate has a sense of occasion built into it — well judged.
And this is the La Piscine de Omelette. It uses hayashi sauce rather than demi-glace, which is good. I had a little; like the demi, it is a sauce with real depth and it is very good.
Delicious. It occurred to me that if the La Piscine plate is the omelette plus grilled chicken, cheese hamburg and salad, then a difference of 230 yen is remarkable. An occasional theme park — rides, atmosphere, food, all enjoyable. Satisfied.
May you meet something good to eat today too.
La Piscine (yoshoku / Keio-Yomiuriland Station, Yomiuriland-mae Station, Yurigaoka Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.4
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.