三陸産カキのカルパッチョ ケッカソース。
Full course lunch is 3500yen(no tax, no service charge).
Focaccia with rosemary.
Oyster carpaccio, Checca Sauce. The oyster is a bit salty, but the sauce has nice citrus flavour.
サルデーニャ産カラスミのフェデリーニ。
北イタリアン伝統パスタ アニョロッティ。
Fedelini with dried salted tuna roe. Spicy with real hot little chilli in it. Lots of seafood like scallops, prawns, clams, fish meat. Love the fish taste!
Agnolotti – traditional North Italian pasta apparently. Smaller than the usual ravioli, stuffed with pork belly and cheese. Green because of the spinach mixed in it.
スペイン産イベリコ豚のロースト。
Roasted Iberico pork. Fat and meat nicely balanced, very juicy. The sauce is made from eshallot and pork stock and something else I couldn’t catch when the waiter explained. Very delicious too. Actually I like the meat dish better than the pasta, which is usual for me in an Italian restaurant.
Lunch set comes with a small coffee. Dessert is optional.
Lunch menu(Japanese only): 1, 2.
La Saetta
Category Archives: 02:Italian
Volo Cosi (ヴォーロ・コズィ＠千石)
Lunch at a rather new Italian restaurant which is obscurely located but much hyped amongst food bloggers.
Beautiful dark and classy decor. Though I learnt afterwards that this place used to be a French restaurant and the decor is pretty much unchanged. Service is very formal, a whole team of stiff-backed black-suited waiters and waitresses standing around every corner and checking on you all the time. Very friendly people though.
Vegetable soup, with barley in it. It is so tiny, amazed they found such a miniature bowl. Bread is hot and very good.
全粒粉の自家製スパゲティ たまねぎとアンチョビソース。
Appetizer plate. Couldn’t quite catch the waiter’s explanation of each item but they are gorgonzola mousse(very good!) in front of the brioche, roasted pigeon(in the middle), cod paste on potato cake, crab, octopus, vegetable stew, eel roll with orange sauce, and sardine.
There were many pasta choices, I had the homemade whole-wheat spaghetti with onions and anchovy sauce. Simple but good. The onion is very sweet. Soaked all the leftover sauce with a second helping of bread.
栗のアイスクリームとパンナコッタ。
Japanese chestnut ice-cream and Panna Cotta with cherry sauce. A lot of chestnut must have been used to make the ice-cream, not too smooth but very rich.
Lunch without the meat dish – the one I ordered – is 2750yen. Quite cheap actually. Full course lunch is 3800yen.
Volo Cosi
Aroma-Fresca (アロマフレスカ )
This Italian restaurant is inside Casa Vinitalia which I have been twice before. The background story is long, but anyway this place is so legendary and has so many loyal fans that you need to book 3 months in advance. Yes 3 months!! Such heroic deeds are not performed by me of course. ^^;; We had the standard course which is 10000yen. The seasonal course is 13500yen(a bit hard to read but the menu is here). Everything in the pictures are included in the course for one person. Expectation for the quality of the food is fulfilled – all the dishes are absolutely delicious and unforgettably fragrant, the service is immaculate. The interior? When you walk in, you feel like you have wandered into a secret garden of your dreams~.
The olives are so green, never tried before.
Smoked unagi with caviar.
焼きタラバ蟹のサラダ アロマフレスカ風。
Charcoal grilled taraba crab salad.
穴子の香草蒸し フレッシュトマト風味。
ポルチーニの冷たいスープとアワビの肝。
Steamed anago with herb and fresh tomato.
Porcini potage with abalone liver.
ワタリ蟹のスバゲッティ。
じゃがいもを詰めたラヴィオリ バジリコ風味。
Watari crab spaghetti.
Potato ravioli in basil sauce.
金目鯛のわかめ包み蒸し。
Steamed red sea bream wrapped in seaweed, clam sauce. The original menu is sea bream with a special kind of clams but unfortunately the clams were not available that day….
Lemon and passion fruit sorbet. Very sour and really wakes you up!
和牛のビステッカ アロマフレスカ風。
Wagyu(Japanese beef), comes in a hot plate and you have to move it to your own plate. The top looks rare but bottom is cooked. Very soft and very fatty. Eat it with lemon+mustard sweet paste, or wasabi(western type apparently) or garlic paste. The salad is rucola. Also comes with sweet potato in cheese cream sauce, very sweet like a dessert!
イチジクのコンポート、ライチアイスクリーム。
Fig compote, with lychee ice-cream(blue berry sauce inside the ice-cream).
Petit four and caramel tea, and more sweets and chocolate in a big glass.
What a meal!
Aroma-Fresca
Ristorante IL NIDO (イル・ニード＠下北沢)
Vegetables in marinade and sardine with olives on top. Quite a solid plate for a palate teaser. The foccacia is a little dry but alright.
青りんごで包んだ フォアグラのテリーヌ。
コルドネッティ 魚介のジェノヴェーゼソース。
Antipasto: Terrine of foie gras wrapped in green apple. Apple is sweet and foie gras is salty, my favourite combination! Though the foie gras is slightly soaked, probably because of the apple? A piece of smoked duck on the side which is quite dry.
Primo: Cordonetti with seafood genovese. The pasta has the chewy and elastic texture of Japanese yakisoba! ^^;;; Genovese is not the usual basil paste, but chopped fresh basil mixed with olive oil. Despite the unexpected taste and look, I like this dish!
山形牛のソテー。
口直し：ローズマリー、タイム、アニスのシャーベット。
Secondo: Yamagata beef saute. The sauce is just Balsamico and olive oil I think. The vegetables are great. The beef is fatless and not too soft, need a lot of chewing but it is not bad. My friend’s fish is nicer.
Sorbet of rosemary, thyme and anise. Very refreshing.
ババとキャラメルセミフレッド。
Baba with caramel Semi Freddo. It is very good! Not too sweet, the sponge is soaked with rum, the ice-cream is smooth. My friend’s simple Panna Cotta is absolutely delicious too. I am very impressed by the desserts here, as I always think desserts are boring in Italian restaurants. ^^;; Comes with espresso and little sweets, which are both nice. Lunch course is 3500yen. Glass wine is 900yen. Service charge is 600yen per table. Overall it was quite a satisfactory lunch, slightly salty was the general impression. In fact we both felt quite thirsty afterwards, but the level of saltiness was acceptable for me. This restaurant has only 4 tables and a capacity of 12 people at the most – a very small place even for Tokyo. About 10 minutes walk from the nearest Shimokitazawa station if you don’t get lost, which we did. ^^;; There is no cheaper lunch course than the one we ordered, probably part of the reason why we were the only customers during the entire lunch time even though it was a Saturday and the area near the station was crowded with people.
IL NIDO
LA BETTOLA per tutti@Nihonbashi （ラ・ベットラ ペル トゥッティ＠日本橋）
３９９０円のディナーコース。
米ナスとモッツァレラのオーブン焼き。うにのスパゲッティ。
Oven aubergine and mozzarella. Uni spaghetti.
スペアリブ。ビターチョコケーキと焼き菓子の盛り合わせ。
Spare rib. Bitter chocolate cake.
I have been to the original restaurant and its sister restaurant, which are only a few minutes’ walk away from each other. Both were very good, especially the uni spaghetti. There is also a branch in Shinjuku which I had lunch before and was no good, and they didn’t have Uni spaghetti in the lunch menu. A friend tried to book the original restaurant but she was told that the seats were fully booked for 2 months…even the sister restaurant was an impossible wait. So we tried this newly opened branch in Nihonbashi…it bears the exact same name as the no-good one in Shinjuku, and I wasn’t expecting high…turned out it really was no good. The worst was my spare rib, so hard and rough! The uni spaghetti was okay, not too much uni taste and quite watery…
LA BETTOLA per tutti(Nihonbashi)
Elio Locanda Italiana(半蔵門)
１６００円のランチ（サラダとコーヒー付き）。根野菜のスープ。
Vegetables soup. A small salad too, not in picture.
菜園風タリアテッレ、リコッタチーズケーキ。
Tagliatelle with zucchini. Ricotta cheese cake. Quite good value for so much food – the portions are big! Overall taste is basic, but there are a lot vegetables and it feels healthy. An Italian friend of mine recommended me this place, said it was very authentic. I went on a weekday lunchtime quite late and it was still packed with customers, mostly foreigners, probably because the British embassy is nearby? Most of waiters are Italian too, and the atmosphere is very lively, in fact I have never been to an Italian restaurant in Japan noisier than this place…felt like I was in dim-sum place!!(^^;;) Maybe they are used to serving businessmen with very limited time for lunch, each dish came quickly(but not until I finished the previous). I went into the restaurant at half past and I was able to leave at five past! 35 minutes!
Elio Locanda Italiana
Cascina Canamilla(カシーナ・カナミッラ＠白金台)
Peach Bellini. Appetizer: Kidney beans soup, cauliflower and beans(oily and sour), marinated rockfish(again oily and sour), fried hummus chip(quite good), ham, potato and cod paste with mayonnaise.
Two of us ordered two different pasta and the waitor himself suggested us to share and offered to divide for us. Of course we said yes and were grateful for the good service, though later we discovered they charged 10% service even during lunch time…so the pictures are both half portion. Pansoti with spinage, ricotta cheese and ham stuffing, walnut and butter sauce. The pasta skin is very nice, soft but sticky texture. Pappardelle with minced horse meat in red wine sauce. Tasted like beef to me(^^;;). With coffee included, about 3600yen per person…ouch. Well, I knew it was quite a poshy place. Even on a weekday afternoon, boiling hot temperature, it was packed with people, mostly girls, some even sat outside in the terrace…gosh. My friend overheard the two guys sitting next to us and one of them was a chef from a French restaurant…and my friend said they were listening to us when we talked about which restaurant is great which restaurant sucks…(^^;;)
Cascina Canamilla