tokyo food file: mango

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...