assimilate this: guilo guilo, 75018

I would have some real thinking to do, if in the future I am ever given the choice between dining at a Japanese restaurant in Paris and committing seppuku. Which, I shall have ask myself, will be more painful? Or is the latter sort of inevitable, as a method of saving face after the shame of the former?

My experiences with Japanese food in the City of Light have run the gamut from grotesque - the gnarly bentos for sale on rue Saint Anne, with their unidentified fried objects atop shoe-sized rice wads - to dispiriting, as in the rapacious and tasteless stylings of the Issé group, who specialise in marking up much the same Far East paraphernalia as everyone else, only much further.

Until recently I held out quite a bit of hope, thinking that perhaps all the Japanese restaurants I'd tried in Paris had, despite their most ambitious efforts, simply not been expensive enough. But this past women's fashion week brought with it the occasion to visit Guilo Guilo, a somewhat pricey spot in the 18ème renowned for its tough reservations and the seasonal innovations of its chef, Eiichi Edakuni, who somehow simultaneously maintains a successful restaurant in Kyoto. I say "somehow" because I left Guilo Guilo with the impression that Edakuni's chief innovation there is not his food, which is unmysterious and delicious, but rather his aggressive rudeness and bald unprofessionalism, traits which I can't help thinking would only be tolerated by a French audience who, wowed by Japophilia, have been too quick handing out the Genius Card That Excuses Everything. (Polanski has one, too.)

n.d.p. in madrid: common decency at bocaito

After a few nights spent careening around Madrid en masse guided only by iPhones and good intentions, it was a tremendous relief on our last night to actually have a reservation in our name somewhere. My friend D's friend C, a Madrid native, had made the res from London and then moved heaven and earth to arrive in time for the main course.

I suspect that D had made us intentionally late for C's sake, actually. We all trooped into Chueca-district restaurant Bocaito loopy on sherry and about an hour late, prompting the matronly proprietress to unleash a wild tirade on impoliteness and ethics to the only member of our party who could understand her, which happened to be Y, the curator of the group show in which D's wife E was performing. We all seated ourselves red-faced with heads bowed - but grinning, since at very least we were seated, and at a restaurant that promised to be decent, even.