Why you should experience Girandole in Tokyo, Japan.
Girandole is a cosmopolitan French brasserie where Nishi-Shinjuku's vertical cityscape, three decades of Park Hyatt Tokyo dining, Alain Ducasse's Parisian tradition and Kojiro Tsutsumi's Franco-Japanese career converge high above western Tokyo.
Set on the 41st floor of Park Hyatt Tokyo near Koshu Kaido and just steps from Shinjuku Central Park, the restaurant retains Vera Mercer's double-height collage of 144 black-and-white photographs depicting European café culture. A sweeping 2025 renewal by Jouin Manku preserved that visual signature as the original Girandole became Girandole by Alain Ducasse, shifting the cooking toward contemporary French brasserie traditions. Tsutsumi translates that direction through Japanese produce and a career divided between Tokyo and Paris, giving the dining room a culinary connection to both cities. The result is a Nishi-Shinjuku restaurant where Mercer, Ducasse, Jouin Manku and Tsutsumi have each shaped a dining room first introduced with Park Hyatt Tokyo in 1994.
What you should know about Girandole.
Girandole is best known for beginning with Park Hyatt Tokyo on July 9, 1994 before undergoing its most consequential change three decades later, when a 19-month hotel restoration culminated in its December 2025 reopening as Girandole by Alain Ducasse. The partnership brought Ducasse Paris into the restaurant and recast the original dining room around the French brasserie, with Patrick Jouin and Sanjit Manku leading the redesigned interior. Kojiro Tsutsumi provides the culinary continuity: the Tokyo-born chef graduated from Musashino Culinary Institute, moved to Paris and worked at one-MICHELIN-starred La Table d'Anvers and two-star Michel Rostang before joining Park Hyatt Tokyo in 2007. He became Girandole's Chef de Cuisine in 2019, then spent seven weeks inside Ducasse Paris restaurants during spring 2025 as preparations advanced for the restaurant's next chapter. Ducasse's arrival also preserved one of the original room's most distinctive commissions, Vera Mercer's two-level arrangement of 144 monochrome photographs devoted to European café life. A 5.5-foot Italian girandole pedestal now stands at the entrance with changing floral work by UI Florist Workshop, connecting the restaurant's name with an object incorporated specifically into the renewal. Girandole consequently enters its fourth decade through an unusual continuity of Mercer's 1994 visual authorship, Tsutsumi's long Park Hyatt tenure and a new culinary partnership with one of France's most consequential restaurateurs.
Sea scallops from Hokkaido establish the new kitchen's approach through fennel and citrus, pairing Japanese seafood with the restrained construction of a contemporary French brasserie plate. Vegetables grown in Tokorozawa by Yoko Farm, which has cultivated without pesticides or chemical fertilizers since 1982, move into black truffle, giving produce enough prominence to carry a course independently. Kochi hata follows with smoked aubergine, tsurumurasaki and cooking jus, before Aichi duck turns toward charred beetroot and peppercorn sauce. Dessert returns more explicitly to French brasserie tradition through rum savarin with vanilla Chantilly, Tarte Tatin with buttermilk whipped cream and chocolate soufflé made with chocolate from Alain Ducasse Manufacture in Tokyo. Girandole brings those courses together through Tsutsumi's strongest professional connection: French technique learned in Paris applied to ingredients drawn from Japan.
How to fold Girandole into your trip.
Girandole works as the dinner anchor for an afternoon tracing western Shinjuku from the infrastructure that preceded its skyscrapers into two institutions created during the district's late-twentieth-century cultural expansion.
Begin at Shinjuku Central Park, planned in 1960 on land associated with the former Yodobashi Water Filtering Plant and opened in 1968 as part of the new city-center project that remade western Shinjuku before transferring to Shinjuku Ward in 1975. Continue to NTT InterCommunication Center, opened in Tokyo Opera City in 1997 with Arata Isozaki directing The Mirage City-Another Utopia, an inaugural exhibition involving figures including Zaha Hadid, Steven Holl, Toyo Ito and Kazuyo Sejima. Conclude at Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, opened on September 9, 1999 around cultural patron Kotaro Terada's collection, now numbering 4,000 works and containing more than 350 by abstract painter Tatsuoki Nambata. The progression moves from the land cleared during Nishi-Shinjuku's postwar transformation through Isozaki's experiment in art and technology into Terada's major collection of postwar Japanese art, placing Girandole within the cultural development of western Shinjuku.
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