Feature No.1 — Archives de la Cuisine Classique
Lièvre à la Royale
How does the hare that bears the king's name survive?
A hare is steeped in red wine for a week. Its innards are removed, cooked, and returned to the sauce along with the blood. Inside the oven, the ears that once stood upright slowly droop in the heat, taking the shape of the hair on a playing-card king — and that is why the dish is called "royale." This is told in all seriousness.
Lièvre à la Royale stands at the summit of classical French cuisine, the royal road of game cookery, and yet it has become a dish one rarely has the chance to taste. The hare (lièvre) itself is scarce, and cooks able to prepare it are scarcer still. This feature weaves the biography of a single dish using only the primary sources held in this archive — the half-century of diner Masuyuki Uchida's diaries, and the record of the 2025 gathering where it was recreated.
Chapitre I
The First Shock — A Memory of Bocuse
The thread of this record begins half a century ago. Masuyuki Uchida first encountered the dish at "Le Maestro," a Tokyo restaurant partnered with Paul Bocuse — a place that served almost as a guesthouse for the world-class conductors invited to Suntory Hall. In a 2015 diary entry, the memory of that first plate is preserved in astonishing resolution.
Stained a chocolate brown by the red wine and gleaming smoothly, the hare appears whole, lying on its belly with its white front teeth showing, and the guests let out a cheer. A single hare serves eight to ten people. Even the innards are not discarded — they are cooked, returned to the belly, and roasted. This, I think, is what game cookery truly is.
As for how the guests felt, most said something like: "I'm glad I finally got to eat it today — but once is quite enough."
Now and then a hare still carries shotgun pellets that could not be removed. When one strikes a guest's tooth, the restaurant does not apologize. It applauds and says "Congratulations" — proof that you are eating true wild game. Just as Maxim's drew the curtain on its history after fifty years, Le Maestro too closed its doors after ten. The leather-bound wine list the restaurant gave Uchida on its final day, they say, still sits on his shelf.
Chapitre II
2012, a Reunion After Four Years — Aimé Vibert
Time passed, and in November 2012, at Aimé Vibert in Kōjimachi, the dish was served unexpectedly at the suggestion of Chef Wakatsuki. For Uchida it was his first lièvre in four long years.
To have such a royal classic of game cookery prepared for me — I was utterly moved. […] Eating this dark-brown, thick sauce with a sauce spoon fills me with happiness.
And the marriage of the wine and the lièvre was a magnificent harmony of strength against strength. This, I felt from the bottom of my heart, is the true thrill of game — and a deep gratitude welled up in me.
Chapitre III
2016, Only Two in the Country — "This Is Game"
March 2016, Aimé Vibert again. That season, only two wild hares were hunted in all of Japan. One of them was prepared for this very evening.
This deep-black, rich sauce is a masterpiece that draws in every essence of the hare, innards and all. The hare's flesh was delicious, the sauce had real depth, and inwardly I was giving a great round of applause. […] Tonight's dish had truly profound flavor — the kind of magnificent cooking that lets you say, chest out, "This is game."
"Cooked straight, this dish is inevitably gamey;
how to temper that, I believe, is the measure of a chef's skill."
Chapitre IV
2017, the Promised Plate — Lachute
Even a foreshadowing survives in the record. In the autumn of 2016, at Lachute in Omotesandō, Uchida made a pact with the restaurant: "If a lièvre comes in around January or February, then a lièvre royale in March or April." And on April 22 of the following year, 2017, the promise was kept. Chef Takuto Murota — himself a hunter who carries a gun — aged an Aomori-raised hare for two weeks (faisandage) and prepared the season's final lièvre royale. It was a game dinner for eight.
The rich sauce with innards and blood, alternated with the vegetables on a separate plate. The most perfectly delicious lièvre yet.
Chapitre V
2025, the Recreation — "It Must Never Be Allowed to Die Out"
And then, January 2025. The record passes into the hands of another diner. At the classical-cuisine gathering Uchida hosts, the very Bocuse lièvre à la royale that had stunned Uchida himself back in 1970 (Shōwa 45) was recreated — a gathering two full years in the making, entrusted to Chef Takara, who knows Bocuse's cooking inside and out. Diner Kazuyoshi Takahashi recorded the night this way.
An overwhelming lièvre à la royale!! […] The lièvre itself is precious, and its character differs considerably between France and Japan, but in Chef Takara's hands the Japanese wild hare was so refined and so powerful that it sent shivers through me.
There is reason in the good old dishes that you still find yourself longing to eat. I felt anew, and strongly, that this must never be allowed to die out.
Photos: from the January 2025 "Classical Cuisine Gathering" (photographed by Kazuyoshi Takahashi). All 13 images are on the record page.
The shock of 1970. The reunion of 2012. The "two in the whole country" of 2016. The promised plate of 2017. And the recreation of 2025 — lay out half a century of records side by side and a simple fact emerges: this dish has survived not because it was "preserved," but because, time and again, someone ordered it, prepared it, and ate it. Only those who have eaten can write the record. And a dish, so long as it is being eaten, does not die.
The Reiwa Gastronomy Club calls one such dish back to the modern table each month, one at a time. This archive is the ground on which those records are kept.
Every statement in this feature is based on primary sources held in this archive (the Dining Diary of Masuyuki Uchida and the Facebook Dining Record of Kazuyoshi Takahashi). Quotations are reproduced verbatim from the original (apart from elisions).
This archive is published in the hope of advancing research and the development of the culinary world. Unauthorized reproduction of its contents, and any commercial use of its content or data, is strictly prohibited. All copyrights belong to the Reiwa Gastronomy Club and Culina Inc. Terms of Use