Every episode of La Grande Maison Tokyo is a feast for the eyes.
Set in the high-pressure world of fine dining, fantastical gastronomical creations play a central role to the series, whether it be venison curry or poached albacore or an impossibly square Moroccan salad. Each becomes the center of the frame — more Chef’s Table than TBS drama — and makes each installment of the 11-episode show a food fantasy.
Much like many of the dishes within the show’s universe, La Grande Maison Tokyo (drop the “la” for the domestic title) offers an elevated take on a usual preparation of entertainment. It is a J-drama marinated in red wine and coated in high-end bread crumbs before being cooked at just the right temperature. Familiar flavors of ridiculous narrative turns and over-the-top plot points come through, but done better than what you usually get.
Grande Maison — which originally aired on TBS in 2019, but appeared on streaming services recently including Netflix with a variety of subtitles, and which wrapped up via a feature-length film at the end of 2024 — follows a band of chefs lead by Natsuki Obana (played by Takuya Kimura) as they attempt to open a Michelin three-star French restaurant in Tokyo. Besides seeking out the best ingredients Japan has to offer to perfect new angles on dishes, the characters wrestle with a full-course of personal demons alongside industry sabotage by both a rival shop vying to be the city’s finest and vengeful food journalists.
Think of it as Japan’s version of FX’s The Bear. Both center on a prodigious chef who fell from culinary grace as they attempt a comeback (and eye Michelin approval) while working through their issues. Yet the American show approaches all of this from a prestige-TV perspective — the personal problems stem from family rifts and relationship regret, with the conflicts being small scale. Grande Maison, meanwhile, is pure J-drama excess — Obana’s trauma involves a foreign politician nearly dying at his restaurant, and the conflict in his world approaches country-shaking scandal and espionage.
Grande Maison isn’t a great drama per se. Yet it is an absolutely mouth-watering J-drama. It did not break any new ground beyond filming some of its scenes in celebrated Parisian restaurant L'Ambroisie, and advances on the industry’s usual mix of constant twists and somewhat ridiculous developments (again, the incident setting all of this in motion is an international incident that turns Obana into the shame of Japan).
The show does it all so well, however. In the wrong hands, these ingredients become cliche and bland. Grande Maison, though, serves them up in a luxurious package — scenes from Paris, the interiors of the restaurants appearing every bit as Michelin-ready as they claim to be, the food itself looking delicious. The character’s arcs, meanwhile, manage to balance just right between too rich and compelling. Scenarios seem far fetched at first — Will this chef be able to reunite with his family by getting Michelin Stars? Can a writer turned sommelier make peace with those who nearly derailed her career? — yet keep you binging.
Beyond its newfound ease of access via streaming, now is a great time to enter Grande Maison because the story it started telling in 2019 has finally wrapped up. On its own, the first season of the show holds up well as a self-contained story, only made occasionally awkward by references to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and even features a side set of shorts focused entirely on rising chef Shohei Hirako (Yuta Tamamori of Kis-My-Ft2). Right before the feature-length film, a TV special catching up with the crew in a post-pandemic world aired, and actually serves as a vital watch before seeing the movie.
La Grande Maison Paris can still be seen in Japanese theaters at time of writing, though will surely be available digitally in the near future. It concludes the Grande Maison story by throwing most of the core characters into the French capital as they attempt to bring a new venture to Michelin-starred glory. At times it indulges too much in its cinematic scope — it goes well beyond over the top in its first half by including a storyline about mobsters and featuring an exploding house fit for an action movie, not a peek into the world of cooking — but returns to what makes the franchise compelling for its final stretch, offering one more helping of comfort entertainment done up fancy.
