Alternative

As its name would suggest, Alternative is a restaurant that’s simply different. The entire concept of the restaurant is seemingly paradoxical in itself; a family restaurant for adults? But its head chef Saito Takayuki, impossibly, makes it work. He started his culinary career in Mikage Juenne in Kobe and Shibuya’s La Blanche, before continuing his training overseas at Michelin-starred French institution Le Benaton. His return to Japan saw him serving in the kitchens of L’art et la maniere and Provinage, eventually taking over the latter and renaming it Alternative. And providing an Alternative is exactly what he does. In spite of his extensive expertise in the French culinary ways (l’art et la maniere, ironically), Chef Saito also infuses Chinese and Japanese elements for a style all his own, that he simply calls “Saito style”. And true enough, Saito style is a style all its own; something that can be found nowhere else but Alternative. In true Alternative fashion, the restaurant also eschews the usual practice of putting meat at the center of the meal, but instead puts the spotlight on vegetables instead with several vegetarian and vegan-friendly options. The first step in the culinary process, Chef Saito says, is to visit farmers to inspect their products and discover their specialties. This lets him choose the best ingredients and produce for their respective seasons. And just like the seasons, so does the specialty at Alternative change. For example, spring’s highlight is the distinctively-titled asparagus Kandinsky, named for the expressionist painter. From the tip to the base of the stem, each part of the asparagus has a different taste, and so Chef Saito takes advantage of this to make a beautiful galaxy of varying tastes, textures and colors. Winter, by contrast, features an amaebi sweet shrimp tataki with Muromachi-era Jingoemon potato — the latter produced by only one farm in the whole of Japan. The sweet flesh of the shrimp is augmented by the thick, earthy flavor of the Jingoemon: a truly comprehensive combination of Japan’s earthly and oceanic bounties.