Location is everything, as the saying goes, when it comes to opening a restaurant — and it's no less true in central Tokyo than anywhere else in the world. But that's only one reason why Esterre, the beautiful new French restaurant unveiled last month in the ultraluxury Palace Hotel Tokyo, has so much going for it.
First, it boasts one of the prettiest settings in the city, with picture windows overlooking the walls and leafy precincts of the Imperial Palace, down along the broad avenue that just last month carried the new emperor's ceremonial motorcade. There's more to it, though: The site now occupied by Esterre commands considerable cachet.
The Palace Hotel, in its original 1960s incarnation, boasted one of Tokyo's pioneering temples of haute cuisine, the legendary Crown Restaurant, which helped introduce a generation of Japanese diners to elevated, albeit fusty, French gastronomy. But the hotel, redeveloped and reopened in 2012, has now retired the classic name, with Esterre taking its place.