The first restaurant I ever visited in Kobe was Graciani, a French restaurant housed in an historic western house built in the hills of the Kitano district. It was impressive from the outside, and inside the service was great and the food was excellent.
About a year ago it went out business, and Kuniko and I were pretty bummed out because it was one of our favorites. We set about finding a new favorite restaurant in Kobe and although the search was a blast we never really found anything quite like it.
Surprisingly, Kuniko happened across an advertisement for Graciani recently. Apparently they opened under new owners, and so Sunday we went to go check it out. During the day we caught a concert near Harborland, and once that wrapped up we did a little bit of shopping and then headed to dinner.
They had upgraded the building and built some nice outdoor seating, and inside was much nicer with a bar in the old reception area and new floors and tables. Unforunately our favorite waiter was no longer there, but the service was very good and our server was pretty friendly. We had a bottle of wine with dinner and really enjoyed ourselves. The menu was great – a seven course meal with lots of variety. I can’t remember everything we ate, but the standouts were the beef, the seafood bisque, and some excellent snapper served over risotto. They served a cheese plate just before dessert (yes!), a little palate-refresher of grape sorbet and mint jelly, and then wheeled a big heavy cart covered with desserts. The guy was funny – he said we could have as many and/or as much of the desserts as we wanted – I guess it was a quiet night for business. We put in a request for several things to try, and they brought mine out with a plate that had “Happy Birthday Bryan” written in chocolate around the edges. Nice touch, Kuniko.
On our way out the chef came out to wish me a happy birthday and we complemented him on the great meal. He showed us around a little bit and let us see the wine cellar – it had a big window facing the street so people could peek in and see the wines aging. We had a good dinner, and went home with (very) full stomachs.
The tail end of a matsuri was still going on at the shrine at the end of the road in Okubo, so we changed clothes and walked over to check it out. It really was the end of the night, though, and everyone looked tired and ready to call it a day. We walked back to our place ahead of one of the mikoshi, and called it a day ourselves. It was a really good day, and Kuniko really came through with a great birthday dinner.
