My second, almost simultaneous, thought is, “What’s that delicious scent?” I’m gobsmacked by an intoxicating aroma — a heady potpourri of that new-hotel smell mixed with something else that I can almost taste. It’s on the tip of my tongue. It smells like… like… like… strawberries! And then I spot them, on the coffee table, next to a bottle of Ruinart Champagne on ice. Alongside, I find a minimalist note: “Yayoi Hime strawberries from Ibaraki Prefecture.” It includes a tiny map of Japan showing Ibaraki in proximity to Tokyo.
If you’ve ever explored the basement of a high-end Japanese department store, then you know the excitement I’m feeling right now. Those posh retail stores display stunning arrays of $200 melons and $90 pears and whatnot — the Hermès of fruits, raised with the love and attention normally reserved for an only child. Fruits in Japan are not grocery; they’re precious gifts. I pick up one of these berries and swallow it nearly whole. Then another. And another, obsessed. They melt in the mouth like little clouds. They are astonishingly delicious.
The Park Hyatt Tokyo reopened in December after a 19-month closure, during which every aspect of the hotel underwent a complete refurbishment at the direction of Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku of Paris’ Studio Jouin Manku, who spent the four years before that drafting the plans.
The hotel occupies the 39th to 52nd floors of the Shinjuku Park Tower. When it originally debuted in 1994, this was merely the third Park Hyatt worldwide, after only Chicago and Sydney. It was also, in those days, the most luxurious Western-style skyscraper hotel in Japan. Long before the arrival of Four Seasons (now two), Aman, Mandarin Oriental, The Peninsula, The Ritz-Carlton, Bvlgari, Fairmont… there was Park Hyatt. It was one of the most technologically advanced hotels of its era. And putting an indoor pool on a high floor with bird’s-eye views was almost unheard of. Park Hyatt became a symbol of what a modern urban hotel could be, which was ironic since Tokyo’s economy had just entered its Lost Decade of prolonged stagnation (while Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea all leapfrogged ahead). But this hotel not only thrived; it would soon star in the movie Lost in Translation. Thirty years on, it was probably overdue for a little nip/tuck, perhaps even a hip replacement.
Jouin Manku’s vision was not to give it an extreme makeover, but rather to bring it back to the beginning, to fully honor the original designer John Morford’s legacy: as an oasis of calm in a city of chaos. The most dramatic transformation came to the guest rooms, which were completely gutted and redone in soothing palettes of beige and taupe with the hotel’s familiar anthracite black, faintly accented with the softest of greens and powdery blues. Plus: maple, hinoki, bamboo and elegant Italian marble.
In the hotel’s public spaces, the biggest change shows up in the 41st-floor French brasserie, Girandole, which is now overseen by Alain Ducasse’s restaurant group. The name was thusly changed to Girandole by Alain Ducasse.
Park Hyatt Tokyo has always taken dining (and its art) very seriously, so the F&B renovations in particular had to be approached delicately. And at first glance, Girandole looks the same. German artist Vera Mercer’s vast collage of black-and-white photographs of French cafe culture still presides over the dining room from the second-story bulkheads. But when my gaze settles onto the restaurant itself, I realize that everything has been updated: gorgeous maple chairs and wall panels, crisp white linens and deep-red silks and velvets, with lots of intimate nooks for those romantic (or power-broker) moments.
Chef de cuisine Kojiro Tsutsumi has been cooking here since 2007, but during the closure, he decamped to Paris to work alongside Ducasse for several months. (The hotel retained around 70 percent of its total staff during the intermission.) Lunchtime tables seem to be Girandole’s most coveted reservations — so it would be wise to book one week in advance. Triple that lead time if you want a table for afternoon tea in the adjacent Peak Lounge (the de facto atrium lobby); it’s a socialite hot spot.
Refurbishments elsewhere were meant to be unseen. Major artworks remain untouched, like the aforementioned Mercer but also the stunning, two-story bamboo sculptures by John Morford in the Japanese restaurant, Kozue, and colorful murals by Italian artist Valerio Adami that hang from the rafters in the 52nd-floor New York Grill, a popular steakhouse and jazz club. Still excellent, by the way.
Japan’s obsession with Wagyu beef — not just Kobe but Kuroge, Matsusaka, Miyazaki, etc. — began long before Park Hyatt came to town. However, it was the New York Grill here in the ’90s that played a major role in ushering Japanese beef into the Western-steakhouse mainstream. To see this dining room and bar again today is to see it exactly as it debuted: the polished black floors, the sleek leather chairs, the zebrawood walls and central wine vault… Everything is exactly the same — except every inch of it is literally brand-new. Removed and replaced.
“It’s like refurbishing a vintage car,” says general manager Fredrik Harfors, who oversaw the entire project. “You might have to replace some things, but to do it right, you want to use only original factory parts. We wanted to stay true to the original vision.”
They even kept that odd little closet where the suit-clad bartenders quietly make all their drinks, hidden from view of customers, rather than moving the bar front and center for a more conventional layout. This sort of painstaking restoration is typically reserved for Renaissance palaces and Edwardian manors, not 1990s skyscrapers.
Meanwhile, the signature Japanese restaurant, Kozue, feels today just as it ever did, easily one of the best kaiseki restaurants in Tokyo. This is not a restaurant that’s been dumbed down for Western tourists. On my original visit to this hotel some 20-odd years ago, I naively considered myself an expert in Japanese cuisine because I worked as a food critic in Los Angeles, the epicenter of Japanese dining in America. But Kozue upended everything. My 15-course fugu dinner proved weirder, wilder and more humbling — but also infinitely more beautiful, sweeter and more memorable — than I ever anticipated. I dined back then with two local business associates, both women.
“What’s this?” I asked excitedly, after the chef had delivered something savory and slippery that slithered too urgently down our throats before I got an answer. “It’s from the fugu fish,” one of the women offered, telling me the one thing I already knew.
“Yes, but what part? It’s incredible.”
The two women whispered in Japanese, giggling, as they debated what to tell me. “There’s no English translation,” they ultimately decided. I spoke later with one of the chefs, who told me we’d eaten the fugu’s milt sac, a delicacy with a very short seasonal window.
So many details about that first experience at this hotel stayed with me for decades: the fully automated bidets, the advanced bedside tech, hypnotic night swims in the sky-view pool, even my first Suntory whisky. I’d never wandered so far outside my comfort zone yet felt so strangely at ease.
Now I find myself amazed, and at ease, once again — and, as luck would have it, during fugu milting season.
The Park Hyatt Tokyo is back — with Mount Fuji visible in the distance from my suite’s window this time — as beautiful and as delicious as ever.
Park Hyatt Tokyo, 2, 3 Chome-7-1 Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku City, Tokyo, park.hyatt.com. Rates from about $760; Diplomat Suite from about $3,350.
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