We got their 7 course tasting menu (skipping the cheese in the 8 course option), and the dishes were quite nice. The price was quite reasonable considering that this easily rivaled michelin star restaurants we've eaten at.
The only thing they could easily improve is having a fancier wine pairing option. The one they had was well priced but also pretty basic wines. They could offer a more expensive pairing option with older and better wines.

Thankfully for this 4th time, the service was back to where it should have been. The base menu price stayed in the expensive range, they finally stopped forcing you to buy pointless bottled water for prices higher than good wines by offering filtered water if you asked enough, but they sure upsold you a lot on drinks with no price at all. They didn't even publish the price of the wine pairing...

The nice surprise is that we got the chef's table by the kitchen and were greeted by Hélène who was working there that day, and took a few pictures with us).
The meal itself was great and my dad was very happy to get pictures with Hélène, so that worked out great as a 75th BD dinner.

they didn't have 1944, for my dad's birth year, but they had 1941

this soup was made by heating up the liquid and making it climb into its mushrooms

they gave us VR goggles to watch where the oysters came from

then came time for cheese which they made for us from milk

it didn't have much taste though, salt, oil and vinegar helped

I had to paint the next menu for the content to appear

7 extra deserts for the road :)

Oh yeah, we also took the 8 course sake sampler, and the portions were generous. That was probably less of a great idea, too much sake :)

It was a fancy 10 course menu, well presented, and not as much food as French Laundry (both good or bad depending on how you look at it).
The food itself was good, including a nice helping of good tasting caviar, but the French person in me was disappointed at the total lack of any bread, and when I asked about some, all they had to offer was sourdough, which I politely declined :)

The desserts were ok, but not to the same level as a French restaurant like French Laundry, but I'm obviously biased :)

All in all, it was still a good meal which we quite enjoyed, and their reservations were easier to get than French Laundry, so that's also a plus. A few pictures:

It was pretty and yummy :)

The presentation sure was nice:

Number one had a tasting menu of 4, 7, or 10 courses. For that day, we figured the 7 course one would be enough. Jennifer got the premium wine pairing to go with it:

a few deserts to finish the meal :)

Two days later was our anniversary and Jennifer booked a dinner for us at The Kitchin (yes, it's spelled that way), another michelin rated restaurant. We took the premium tasting menu and Jennifer got the premium wine pairing:

Neither were amongst the top restaurants we've eaten at in Paris or California, but they were both a good dining experience, although not quite competitive in price with similarly good options in California (price was similar except it was UK pounds instead of dollars)

I guess they are Saison's competitor and honestly Saison was totally overpriced without being better. Quince is definitely a better deal, and had more courses (not that more is always better, but in this case it was).

Some pictures:

Definitely a good dinner and Jennifer enjoyed the wine course (good pairings).

And we also got invited by my brother for yet another dinner :)

nice beast ;)

fried

and the rest

Yes, that was a lot of food, we had leftovers despite 4 motivated people :) but indeed the steamed crab meat was very nice, better than frozen for sure.

Their gardens and decors were very nice too:

We got a nice table with view on the open kitchen, which was nice:

They also had a very impressive wine list, with some wines that were over 80 years old, at prices that were related to the age :)

$14288 bottle of Château La Mission Haut Brion 1929

The tasting menu was not showy but was quite tasty:

the wild strawberries 'fraises des bois' were very good

The the food quantity was enough, but not as much as some of their competitors, the quality was very good, the only issue was the bill, which we mostly knew was going to be steeper than any restaurant we've ever eaten at around the world, but the mandated 20% tip, being no tip anymore but just an extra 20% charge on top of the bill, left a bad taste in our mouth. For comparison:

This is another way to say that Saison was 60% more expensive than 2 other excellent competitors which both had around 50% more courses in the meal.

We got to see the bay bridge lighting on the way home:

If you care about a longer review, here's what I posted: Sadly, I have to give this 2 stars described as "I've experienced better" when you factor in that this costs twice as much ($510 per person with tip before wines) than the nearest competition that is also extremely good .

I'll start by saying that I've eaten in about 20 restaurants like this one around the world, including Joel Robuchon (full tasting menu), The French Laundry, and Alinea in Chicago
Saison had very good well presented food in a casual atmosphere, but all 3 restaurants I just listed had food that was just that good, or better, and more courses. Saison was still quite good, if you have quality, you don't need quantity on top, except when the bill for the tasting menu alone is $398 per person.
The very good wine pairing was $298 for just one person (!) and not that many dishes and pourings. The wines were well chosen and the pours were not stingy, but on top of being the most expensive tasting menu, it was also the most expensive wine pairing we've had.

While we knew the price when we went, I think what tipped it over was:
when we got the bill (for 2 people) a 20% tip was included on top of the entire bill (including the wine pairing), which added another $109 to the bill, just for tip. But if it's a required 20% tip, it's not a tip anymore, it should be part of the original bill, and actually some competitors already include service in the bill because it's the French way.
So let's compare: French laundry is $270 with service included, Saison is $510 per person before wines, and don't despair, your bill has a handy line where you can add an additional tip (which I found insulting at this point).

This is regrettable because the food was good, the service was good, but the meal was not a huge meal with so many courses you can't even count them anymore, and you turning away the dessert cart after you've already had 2 prior desserts. Charging about twice as much as the competition with a mandatory 20% tip that includes the price of alcohol just cancelled out what would otherwise have been a good experience.
For what it's worth, we enjoyed our table that was facing the open kitchen, and again all the staff did a very good job.

We went to Aoyama Esaki on thursday evening for dinner. It was a simple traditional japanese food restaurant:

The next day, for lunch, we went to Narisawa, which was a more fancy lunch with interesting presentation, and Jennifer enjoyed a great sake pairing to go along with it:

one of the many sakes

Kobe beef

Turns out the day we were at Santosa, I gave them a call out of the blue, and they had room for us, so we went to l'Atelier. I naively assumed that we'd never be allowed in the real restaurant. But turns out the Atelier actually had a very good tasting menu ($200 with tax and stuff), so we took that. Honestly, it rivalled many fine restaurants we had eaten at:

It was an excellent dinner, we barely managed to get home from there :)
Now, the more interesting part is that I was talking with the French staff, and they told me that the main restaurant has a pretty lax dress code: no shoes, no shirt, no service :) (this is actually because weather in Singapore is truly unbearable and after 10mn outside you'll be drenched in sweat in your clothes, even at night).

So, we made plans to go back the next day for the restaurant and their even fancier tasting menu. It had flights of dishes that came in 3, and that was a very good idea (also sped up the service and turned a 4H+ dinner into a more manageable 2.5H one).
The menu was not any fancy molecular gastronomy, but it was a very good list of dishes, one after another. We were quite impressed:

we got some :)

this half foie gras half beef smoked was fantastic

room for cheese? :)

Then came time for dessert. It was painful by then :)

It was an excellent meal, and apparently cheaper than the Vegas location (although still a steep bill :) )

Soon thereafter was Xmas Eve, and my brother and his family were invited, which gave my dad a chance to do a round of cooking for us:

On the 29th, we went out in Paris and had a good dinner at La Fermette Marboeuf and its very nice decors:

Soon later, for New Year's Eve, James and Lilian joined us, as well as Tata. Tata did her famous sweetbread

admiring wall art most of which were drawn by James

one of the many entrées

one of my dad's many nice plates :)

We had a british Xmas pudding in James' honor

On Jan 2nd, we went to see a musical "Irma La Douce", which was quite well acted with a few hints of today's changes into a story that's more than 50 years old:

On the way out, we had a nice dinner close to the theatre:

And just because we were a bit hungry still, on Jan 3rd, we went to Les Bouquinistes, they had a good tasting menu that was quite reasonably priced:

And after a day at Google on Jan 4th, which I also used to walk around Paris a bit while weather was good, it wsa time to go home and pack for reasonably early flight on the 5th. Great to see everyone again.

We got an 11:00 reservation on a friday and we got there after a slightly less than 2h drive (yes, if you do the math, it was more time driving than eating at the end, but I knew that). The French Laundry had been closed for 6 months or so to destroy their kitchen and rebuild a new one. When we arrived they were working out of a temporary kitchen as the new one hasn't been built yet, but that didn't seem to have impacted the quality of the food we got.

The welcoming and setting were good. They had a menu printed in our name, and it only had 2 options: vegetarian or non vegetarian tasting menu, both at the same price ($300 per person). The menu had 3 dishes where you could substitute a more expensive dish. As plenty others have remarked, they strangely did not have a wine pairing option, which in our opinion is a big faux pas and something that no other such restaurant we've been to, was missing.

The food was very good, the dishes were well presented and the servers all did a very good job (service is included in the price by the way, which is the French way). In the end, my opinion was that it was very good and well executed, but not worth the 100% premium you pay over other very good restaurants with excellent tasting menus too. Part of my reasoning is also based on the fact that due to their popularity, they of course raised their prices quite a bit over time, but unfortunately also removed some dishes. We didn't come out hungry in any way, but they used to have more courses than they do now.

Then, my last point of comparison is that they serve very good traditional French food, but it's not as fancy/different as what you'd get in a place like Baume which offers molecular gastronomy, something interesting to try, or Alinea in Chicago where the entire fancy meal is a spectacle around how it's presented and served.
This may be why their online reviews seem to be a mix of 1's and 5's: people who've enjoyed the still great meal, and others who've eaten at other very good such restaurants in the world and don't find TFL so much better as to justify the price their charge and difficulty of getting reservations.

Either way, we were still happy to have tried it out and cross if off our list :)

Actually I should mention that what sets them apart is that they give you a very nice booklet that shows all the ingredients used for the meal, and how they were chosen and sourced. That was a nice touch that other restaurants we've seen, don't do.

The dinner did finish with a bunch of desserts and sugar, maybe a bit too much for Jennifer, and borderline what I could handle :)

The only big minus was how we ended up waiting 1h at the end for our last dish, dessert. No idea what happened, but service or kitchen capacity was a problem.

my dad was happy with the forkspoon :)

All that said, we still had a great dinner. Glad to have gone back.

For New Year's Eve, Tata did her famous sweetbread and my dad's usual friends came over for dinner. Unfortunately my dad had to duck out early to get a shot for swelling up that happened at the wrong time, but we still had a great evening, even if he was missing for the end of it:

this is how Tata makes sweetbread :)

Yum!

The pictures aren't great, because we were not allowed to use flash, but still got a few good ones:

fake corn with bacon and other yummy stuff in there

edible sugar balloon filled with helium, good times :)

and 15 courses later, we finished with the 2nd dessert

Jennifer was fairly disappointed with the regular wine pairing, and I found out they had a premium wine pairing but they only offered it a few days after we went, so we didn't get to enjoy that. Apart from that, the food was definitely tasty, super well presented, and fun. Definitely an experience you don't get elsewhere.

Very Yummy :)

If money isn't too much of an object, it's a good place to go.

cannot beat his smile, though :)

Subayashi's dad, who runs the famous Sushi-ya in Ginza that the movie is based on

The 'apprentice' who had been there for a mere 17 years or so :) Thankfully he had spent time in Australia and spoke English well

it looks the same, but it's not :)

it comes from a pretty big shell

needless to say that this just melts in your mouth, no chewing required

more sushi, oui!

finishing with the fluffy tamago omlet

the unknown bill until the end at least includes a picture if you wish :)

It's probably a good place if money is absolutely no object, they also have many different kinds of caviars, but since I remember being disappointed by some in the past, I'm a little bit hesitant now considering the price. I suppose it's like getting a very old and expensive bottle of wine: it could be great, but also pretty disappointing.

I remember that the last time the wagyu sampler I got wasn't actually that stellar, whereas this time I have to admit that the 3 ounces of Miyazaki Wagyu did melt in the mouth. It's still pretty horribly overpriced, but it was quite tasty.

Jennifer's dry aged split bone ribeye was quite good too. All in all a good dinner.

At the same time, I had just gotten Google Glass to try out, so it was a good excuse to do both, and we went to Papillon to have a nice dinner with our own foie gras (which can of course still be bought in other states, and the rest of the world).

It was quite a nice dinner I should say.

you can't go wrong with yummy beef covered with seared foie gras

Here some of the pictures taken with glass. Since glass doesn't have a flash and the room was dark, it struggled a little bit (so did my own camera if I was taking pictures without flash). Still, it was nice to be able to snap some pictures at will without having to whip out a camera.

Our server: 'so, I meant to ask you about that thing you were wearing' :)

All in all, very good use of an evening :)

To be honest, the most expensive one was actually not the best, and overall it wasn't quite worth the price compared some others I've tried before. Oh well, that was the price of trying.

This was a good reason to meet the great folks at Dishcrawl, so we had another Foie Gras only dinner thanks to them.

After that, since we were driving by Berkeley by the way back, Jennifer had heard about Chez Panisse and we were lucky enough to get a couple of seats that day, so we had dinner there on the way home:

Nice little dinner, the prix fixe menu that changes every day is warmly recommended.

This unfortunately happened because not to many people eat foie gras (probably many don't even know what it is), were given a one side story on how horrible foie gras was, so they didn't care if it went away. This totally ignores that:

Quite frankly, if those people would put their energy into raising standards for animal farms and humane handling, even if they're going to be killed in the end, that would be effort better spent, and supported by virtually everyone (it will likely also raise the price of meat, but so be it).

So, in about a month, a bunch of farms that make foie gras will be closed and people layed off for no good reason but a few activists' wet dreams. In the meantime, California is having multiple foie gras dinners while it's still legal.

Jennifer and I had a nice 5 course all foie gras dinners, and are planning to have another one or two before it's too late.

It was a great dinner, sooo much foie gras :)

So, it made sense to have them for a sunday night dinner :)
Jennifer seared the foie gras, which was quite good with local Sauternes substitute :) and we had the caviar after that, just because :)
(et la porsche et la blonde dans la piscine :) )

Baume wasn't cheap of course, but it was very interesting food. Molecular dining as they say, stuff that comes from liquid nitrogen, interesting different consistencies mixed together, and so forth.

All in all, it was quite enjoyable.

Yet, it was a good dinner, and the white truffled fries were good :)

They had a nice display at the entrance:

that was my fancy beef sample plate

and even got a candle :)

Then, just because (long story) we went to a Tepanyaki place 2 days later, Kyoto Palace, to see some flying food :)

Both were yummy and enjoyable, thanks :)

Sunday, we went to Mansera for a nice tasting menu meal (7 courses plus desert) with premium wine pairing.

The bathroom had some nice menus the restaurant's chef gathered in top European Resatuarants:

It was a good dinner, although a bit slower than expected (4H). Manresa's slight shortcomings in my opinion were that the chef's tasting menu is just whatever he decides to do that day, and you can't know before getting the plates. It's also more expensive compared to other similar restaurants with good tasting menus (although it offers a few more smaller dishes).

All that said, we did have a good dinner, and Jennifer was happy, so that's what matters :)