It is always a pleasure to discover a great new restaurant — and even more so when "new" means a lot more than just "recently opened." L'As is a small place with a young crew and a location that is easy to overlook. But since opening in early February in the backstreets of Minami-Aoyama, it's been generating the kind of enthusiastic word-of-mouth buzz that bigger names in flashier areas would give their iPads for.

Like its short, punchy name — pronounced "laas," it's French for "ace" — L'As keeps things simple and uncluttered. What catches the eye is not what's there so much as what has been pared away.

Tokyo has plenty of restaurants with a spare, clean-cut, Scandinavian-modern look and comfortable lightwood furniture. But few go so far as to banish all cutlery from sight. The only objects on your tabletop are a dark rectangular block — this is for your bread — and your linen napkin. Everything you need is in a drawer in the table cleverly concealed by your right hand.