For a second attempt at fine dining in Niseko, we tried Moliere Montagne. This restaurant seemed more promising than Teppan.
Founder Chef Hiroshi Nakamichi had trained in Lyon, France before returning to Sapporo to open his first restaurant, Restaurant Moliere, in 1982, blending French techniques with local Hokkaido ingredients. Operating under the Japanese principle of Washoku and focusing his cuisine on the seasons and using local ingredients in their height of season, Chef Hiroshi earned three Michelin stars for Restaurant Moliere in 2012 and another star for Restaurant Asperges. Both restaurants retained their stars in 2017 (the next time the Hokkaido edition of the Michelin guide came out).
In 2014, Chef Hiroshi moved the entire Asperges restaurant to Niseko, bringing everything from the staff to the furniture. With the opening of the Park Hyatt in Hanazono in 2020, a further addition to Chef Hiroshi’s family of restaurants was added with Moliere Montagne.
Hokkaido is one of the most productive farming and fishing areas in Japan, being well known for producing apples, potatoes, wheat, dairy, beef, as well as variety of fish and shellfish. The bountiful produce creates a food culture in Hokkaido unlike any other, where simple food is prepared with a light touch and ingredients are left to speak for themselves.
The restaurant itself is small, 36 seats in a small dining area, opposite an open kitchen. The dining room itself feels a bit like a ski chalet, with fragrant hinoki wood panelling and floor to ceiling windows with views to the deep snowdrifts outside.
The amuse bouche - a slice of prosciutto wrapped around a thin parsnip. Yeah. I didn’t get it. It was literally a slice of prosciutto wrapped around a thin daikon radish - no sauce, no seasoning, no explanation. Well, I guess they do take “light touch” very seriously here.
A mouthful of soup made from burdock root, a very popular vegetable in Japan. Mild and earthy in flavour, the grated burdock root thickened up the soup, although the texture ended up a little grainy.
The Hokkaido seafood platter was the star of the meal. Fresh Hokkaido oysters - extremely fatty, rich and briny. Instead of cocktail sauce or tabasco, they told us to try it with yuzu (a lime-like Japanese citrus) and freshly cracked black pepper. I’ve never tried oysters with pepper before, but it worked surprisingly well.
This was served with raw scallops on a dollop of creme fraiche and topped with caviar. Great combination, bit of saltiness from the caviar, creaminess and richness from the creme frache combined with the sweetness of the scallop meat.
Fourth up was a dish of winter vegetables, with light, fluffy potato gnocchi in a buttery mushroom sauce and topped with microgreens. Normally, I’m not a huge fan of gnocchi, but this one was quite unique, much fluffier than any other gnocchi I’ve ever had.
Another seafood dish, hairy crab meat in a rich risotto topped with a buttery foam. Lots of crab meat in this one, almost as much as the risotto. Sweet crab meat from fresh Hokkaido crab with a rich, thick risotto. Nothing to complain about here.
Between courses, “a Norman Hole,” a tart apple sorbet topped with Calvados served as a palette cleanser.
The main course, presented in a pot and spooned out for each person - braised beef cheek served with leeks, carrots and turnips in a flavourful beef consommé. Nothing particularly special here, although fairly well executed. The slow cooking released a lot of the collagen in the beef cheek, leading to a fall apart on fork tenderness.
The cheese plate, with cheeses made locally from Hokkaido milk.
Finally, an apple tart served with vanilla ice cream. Lots of local Hokkaido apples and scoop of rich, creamy ice cream.
Overall, I can see that they take a “light touch” very seriously. Minimal preparation, minimal fussiness or fanciness, just simple ingredients prepared simply and letting the local produce and seafood speak for itself. The dishes were generally well-executed, but the problem was, like many places in Niseko, a severe shortage of manpower.
Niseko is a ski town, and the population grows by more then triple over the 10 week powder season, so the local population isn’t sufficient to meet the demand for workers during that period. As a result, local businesses rely heavily on temporary seasonal workers, that work for a season then go off to do something else. Without the benefit of experience, the workers need to be taught to perform very quickly with a very rigid process and playbook. All of this leads to a very mechanical and sterile experience.
It felt a bit like the waiters were afraid to speak to us, going through the motions of each dish but without any explanation or conversation. I would’ve preferred some personality, to learn more about the food, how it was prepared, why it was prepared the way it was, how they made the sourcing decisions, how they put the menu together, but I gave up after asking one or two questions, and the waiter having to escalate to management.
It’s a shame, really, because the food was actually pretty good. The experience was just held back by a very corporate and mechanical playbook.
Total damage 96k JPY/4 people.