Monaco: Alain Ducasse and Yoshi

Hello

Finally done with my tripos, and treated myself to Alain Ducasse and Yoshi by Joel Robuchon at Monaco.

Alain Ducasse

Personally, I highly recommend the lunch menu. It's 145 euros for appetizer, main course, cheese selection and dessert. Of course, there is always the usual french add-ons such as amuse bouche, unlimited bread, pre-dessert and post-dessert petit fours. The set menu also comes with unlimited boissons sans aperitif! So I could technically get unlimited freshly squeezed orange juice. :)

Anyway, the setting for Alain Ducasse was lovely. You could choose to dine alfresco or indoors, we chose to sit inside because I don't like getting tan. But if you want to people watch and spend a fine afternoon outdoors, everyone else was outdoors. We were treated to an insane bread selection, and given homemade salted and unsalted butter.

For amuse bouche, we were given mackerel with eggs and lettuce. 

For appetizers, we were given a choice of lobster soup in a pea gazpacho or tuna salad. I didn't like the tuna salad much, found the tuna quite dry and lacking flavor. 

The lobster soup was lovely, and the lobster was really fresh.

 For the main course, we were given a choice of foie gras or lamb. Foie gras was perfect, very well cooked.

 I particularly liked the cheese selection that was offered. They had an extensive selection of goat cheese, blue cheese, camembert and roquefort. We really really enjoyed the fromage! :) 

For desserts, I ordered the vanilla ice-cream with fresh strawberries, and my friends ordered the dark chocolate dessert. The server teased me and said that they ran out of strawberries so they only could give me two scoops of vanilla ice-cream, and my friends said I looked extremely disappointed. But he went back to take out the strawberry sauce and garnished my dessert. God I don't like fruity desserts but the dessert was ethereal, the strawberry sauce was rich, insanely sweet and pure ambrosia.

 My friends loved their dark chocolate ice-cream, it was akin to eating pure cacao. We also had petit fours of macaroons (dry, not recommended), chocolate selection, and amazing cakes. 

Oh and according to traditional French restaurants, the lady gets a gift at the end! So I made away with yummylicious madeleines which my friends quickly pilfered from me. I guess I found it quite value-for-money for a three-michelin star restaurant, food was fine but not amazing amazing, and I would definitely recommend going for the lunch set. Service was great, unpretentious and very helpful, although there was a mix-up at the end which my friend got annoyed about, but I genuinely think it was an accidental oversight on their part.

After my friends played blackjack and jackpot and roulette at the casinos, we made our way to Yoshi. It's a one-star Michelin japanese restaurant by Joel Robuchon. We were escorted to a nice Japanese garden-type setting, and were recommended the tasting menu. But at 195 euros, we thought it was quite pricey for the selection of food it offered. We decided to get the 25 piece of sushi, fish was really fresh, but I think the rice was a little different from the type we were offered in traditional Japanese restaurants, so we were not accustomed to it.

 I also ordered the kani crab tofu from the tasting menu, it 25 euros, and I felt that it was just ordinary. 

We shared the chicken tobanyaki which was cooked satisfactorily. 

We were given madeleines and macaroons for petit fours, and I had a door-gift of a rich buttery cake, which I took 2 days to finish after. 

Overall, I felt that the food was great, but there were other japanese restaurants in the similar price range which offered more interesting or unctuous dishes.