Surreal gluten-free dining.
So we dined last night at s.komatsu, and the food was good, not spectacular but certainly not bad. But it was a Friday night and we had the whole of the main dining room to ourselves – indeed we may have been the only diners in the whole place – with at least four staff (inc. kitchen) to attend to us! What kind of restaurant does only two covers on a Friday night?
s.komatsu bills itself as gluten-free, lactose-free dining, and has a big evangelistic sign about this out the front, which probably turns off some. And then has a really poorly-set-out menu-concept: too many pages and options and the prices are tucked right at the back and you have to choose between two dining concepts, the dining room up the top and the bistro down below. All this is abetted by bumbling explanation by the hosts.
We elected for the full dining whammy upstairs. It is a very nice, modern space they’ve inherited, I think, from a previous tenant. The music is truly terrible – some “restaurant background music” CD compilation with orchestral versions of pretty much every tacky song ever written: a bit of Elton, Barbara, Bette, Michael, I think even some Mariah. Oh and Richard Clayderman-esque versions of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto (oh all right, only the theme bit from the third movement) and the Pathetique Sonata (the middle movement). The music was almost so bad it was good. Poor S, just having bundled off night shift the night before, wasn’t so sure. Mental note to self: after night shifts, keep the meals short and locations unchallenging.
So with all of that the food was mostly nice – good sashimi and tempura, and I had shabu-shabu which I hadn’t had before. Well-meaning service, OK wine, good wineglasses, weird dessert. But only two covers for a whole floor on a Friday night? I hope for their sake they do better when the footy’s on…
