tokyo food file

al fresco lunch at Cucina 13 Aprile — the full post

It's all about the setting. Screened from the sun by a wide parasol and surrounded by shrubbery, you settle in sipping Prosecco and nibbling on focaccia. Ensconced in this oasis of calm, you might almost forget you're just steps away from the Nishi-Azabu Crossing, with its looming expressway flyover and ceaseless roar of traffic.

Inside is nice, with its whitewashed walls, scrubbed wood floors and well-patinated wooden chairs drawn up to crisp white tablecloths. But that outside table is really where it's at. A nice touch: your name inscribed on an ivy leaf to mark your reservation...

 

As nibbles: focaccia and other breads with some good olive oil to dip them in...

Starter #1: Cipolla spuma, prosciutto e pomprori [sic] — fruit tomatoes, from the market in Kamakura; Parma prosciutto; and a foam of fresh (and lightly sweetened) cream...

 

Starter #2: That excellent salad with slices of seared tairagi/tairagai. The salad itself is an eclectic mix of wild greens and herbs, including mange-tout peas, seri, ice plant, a couple of strands of wild asparagus and a single fiddlehead fern. Together with this you get several slices of the shellfish, like a coarser, meatier, country-cousin version of hotate scallops, anointed with a lively dressing of horseradish, mustard and shallots. For an antipasto, it's a substantial serving — and very attractively "plated" on the massive black triangular shell of the very same clam.

 

The pasta course: first up the trofie: small circles of dough rolled up into fat strings a couple of centimeters long — which he serves all'arrabbiata in a rich sauce prepared from fruit tomatoes. Remarkably sweet, and only very lightly piquant, it contains generous amounts of the delicate meat from kegani horsehair crabs.

 

Second, the gnocchi all fave: The broad beans, crushed and mixed with the dough, give the gnocchi an extra smoothness of texture as well as a distinctive dark-green hue. Served with creamy white ricotta cheese and crisp curls of salty pink guanciale (pork jowl bacon), it's not just a great mix of flavors — it's the quintessential Italian color combination.

 

And as a main course, a very tasty fillet of pan-fried amadai with very lightly cooked hamaguri clams. Like everything Chef Hidaka prepares, very attractively presented...

 

Dessert 1: biancomangiare with grappa-infused gelato...

 

Dessert 2: fresh mango served on a mango sorbet, imbued with plenty of vanilla... 

 

Bottom line: a great setting, delicately prepared Tokyo-Italian cucina, and a warm sense of it being a family-run operation. 

The full review is up in my Japan Times column here...

And the Cucina 13 Aprile web site is here...

fresh pasta on the menu, on the tray, on the plate

Gnocchi al fave... trofie all’arrabbiata... and the whole gamut of fresh pasta from Chef Masafumi Hidaka. 

Coming up tomorrow in the Japan Times...

And now it's hit the kiosks and news stands — and it's on-line here...

Fuglen: BYOF (and espresso and cocktails). With plenty of Oslo style.

I gave Fuglen a full write-up last week, soon after it opened. I also introduced it in my Japan Times column yesterday.

As mentioned, Fuglen doesn't actually serve food — but they do encourage you to bring your own to nibble on with their premium coffee, craft beer (they have a good selection in bottles) and house-special highballs and other cocktails.

So what would I take to eat there? Well pastries or the excellent baguette sandwiches from Viron, just opposite Tokyu Honten in Shibuya...

Or, in the other direction, one of the gourmet burgers from Arms, whose take-out/delivery outlet is just a couple of minutes walk away — or 30 seconds by Honda 90 delivery bike — on the Yoyogi Hachiman shopping street.

I'll put up full posts about both those places in due course.

In fact, it's about time I put together a full-scale post about the Tomigaya/Yoyogi Koen area. There's just too much good stuff happening on the edge of the park here!

Tonki's classic tonkatsu — a few more photos

A few more photos of the wonderful Tonki, as featured in my Japan Times column this week. Open 73 years and counting, it really is a one-of-a-kind.

This is the kushi-katsu teishoku set meal (meaning it comes with rice, tonjiru soup and pickles). Many people order the kushi-katsu separately — as a side dish to go with their tonkatsu.

The bright, gleaming kitchen takes up more than half of the downstairs floor area...

The chefs are dressed head-to-toe in white.

Each katsu takes 20 minutes to prepare, from the time you place your order. 

The menu is short and to the point — and available in English.

   

A Tokyo all-time classic.

Dosa dinner @ Nirvanam in Kamiyacho

Does Nirvanam serve the very best Indian food in Tokyo? Well it's definitely up there, especially if you like those aromatic South Indian flavours as much as I do. The full story was in my Japan Times column yesterday, along with some excellent photos by the JT cameraman (thanks, Miura-san!). Here are a few of my rather grainier images from a light dinner there last week.

Starting with the Set Dosa, a tray with two thick fluffy rice-flour "hotcakes" with great dips to go with them.

 

Think of the parippu vada as crisper, slightly larger versions of falafels, except they're made with yellow split peas rather than chickpeas. And they come with a delicate minty-yogurt sauce (rather than tahini). A bit dry on their own, but just right with a Kingfisher beer or two.

 

The Roast Fish is one of our favourites. As described, the chunks of whitemeat fish are coated in a spicy marinade, then cooked and served with a sauce well spiced with plenty of small, fiery red chilies and other aromatics, along with fresh green kari leaf and a good sprinkling of cashew nuts.

 

The main event for us that evening was an excellent mutton curry in the Andhra Pradesh style...

…which went perfectly with the string hoppers.

 

The desserts are (apart from the "mango delight") just as authentic — this one below is the payasam. Mind you, the chai is so teeth-achingly sugared up you really don't need anything else sweet. 

  

 

The Nirvanam home page is here... Curiously though, although it has maps to both its branches, I couldn't see a phone number anywhere. It is: (03) 3433-1217.

It's definitely a good idea to phone ahead. And even if they say they're fully booked, they usually have some tables open at the beginning of the evening (say, until 8 pm).