The Refresh Button on a French Kitchen You Thought You Knew
The seventh-floor room over Tokyo Station rail tracks has a new head chef and the same hard booking. Book at lunch, and confirm the Marunouchi Four Seasons — not the other one.
The taxi turns off Eitai-dori and the driver asks, in the polite way that means he has done this before, which Four Seasons. There are two near Tokyo Station and only one of them has a seventh-floor dining room with a glass-fronted kitchen and a view straight down onto the JR platforms. Say Marunouchi. Say Pacific Century Place. Then take the lift to seven and stop rehearsing what to order — the whole thing is a tasting menu, and the only real choice was made weeks ago on a booking platform.
Sézanne took its third star in the 2025 guide, under Calvert, and held it in 2026. It sits inside the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo at Marunouchi and was hard to get into under Daniel Calvert, and stayed exactly that way when Stephen Lancaster took over as head chef at the end of March 2026. The Andre Fu interiors are still there. The rail-track view is still there. Service is folded into the printed menu price, which is the single most civilised thing about eating here.
The refresh landed cleanly: a new head chef, the same French room on the seventh floor of a hotel.
Editorial Deep
What was cleared: everything. What was left behind: a folded napkin, a small line of crumbs from a bread course that arrived warm twice, and a wine glass that had been topped a beat before it needed to be. Menu Sézanne is the format — a tasting menu of the kitchen's choosing, walked through by a floor team that knows what is coming next and why.
The banquette is a soft grey-green, cushioned deep enough to hold a three-hour lunch without shifting. Andre Fu designed the interior and the discipline shows in the small choices — the brass edging on the service stations, the way the pendant lighting sits low over each table without dropping into eyeline, the pale-wood screens that break the seventh-floor floorplate into something a fifty-cover room can occupy without echoing. Sound is controlled by cushioned upholstery and a carpeted floor; a full room reads as murmur, not clatter.
Do the booking first. Sézanne books on OMAKASE and TableCheck, so create the OMAKASE account in advance. OMAKASE charges ¥390 per seat at reservation and the full price for a cancellation within seven days, and the platform will not accept single-diner requests. Solo diners have to call the restaurant on 03-5222-5810 or email the Four Seasons Hotel Tokyo directly, and that route works if a specific date matters. The MICHELIN Guide listing carries a parallel booking widget as a fallback when OMAKASE looks full. Dress code is enforced — long-sleeve collared shirt for men, jacket preferred, no shorts or beach sandals — and the door will loan a blazer if you forget.
Menu Sézanne is ¥56,925 at lunch or dinner and the Menu du Jour ¥27,830 at lunch, both with 10% consumption tax and 15% service already inside the figure. Strip out what is not food and what remains is smaller than the bill suggests. The wine pairing is where the check climbs fastest, and corkage is priced to encourage the list rather than to offer a workaround. The OMAKASE booking fee, ¥390 a seat, is trivial in context. What is left — the plates, the bread twice-warm, the mignardises — is the menu you agreed to at booking, and it holds up against what lands.
Bring the person who reads menus front-to-back and remembers what they ate three years ago; do not bring the person who wants to share plates and order a second bottle to keep the night moving. Sézanne is a booked-in-advance, sit-forward, three-hour room and it rewards the diner who came for the meal rather than the occasion. A second visit lands best in the opposite season from the first — the Japanese ingredient calendar is legible enough that a March lunch and an October lunch are recognisably different meals from the same kitchen, and the Lancaster regime is early enough that the next visit is also a check-in on where the room is heading.
What to eat
Don't miss.
Menu Sézanne at dinner; Menu du Jour at lunch
“A French room on the seventh floor of a hotel, with a new head chef and a lunch menu that is the best way in.”
Book the Menu du Jour at lunch for the strongest value in the city's modern fine-dining belt; if OMAKASE and TableCheck are both full, Florilège or Sazenka are the adjacent rooms to try.
The Verdict
