There was an Italian restaurant I’d been wanting to try for ages, so I took the chance and went with some friends. It’s called Acqua Pazza, in Hiroo, and apparently it’s hugely popular with women. I booked by email and they were really kind about it. The person who handles the floor wrote the reply to me personally. With service like that, I think even Korean visitors could book without any trouble.
Entrance
Less an entrance than the passage leading to it. The restaurant is on the basement floor, so you take the elevator down. It’s not particularly hard to find, but from Hiroo Station you do have to walk a little way along the shopping street. By the way, the wine bar/café next door, Acqua Vino, belongs to the same group. It must be popular, because it was packed. The tables aren’t spaced very far apart, so it gets a bit noisy, and the chairs are nothing special (at Argo the chairs were practically sofas), so I’d say it has the feel of a restaurant the locals use for special occasions. (The prices, though, true to the neighborhood, were higher than Argo’s.. even higher than Boschetta..)
The table
It was a weekend and there was a large group in, so things were a bit hectic, but on a weekday I think it’d be a cozy place to enjoy a meal. The guy serving us looked like some kind of TV star. Maybe that’s part of why women love the place, I thought. And his service was top-notch too.. with all that, I suppose the higher prices can’t be helped. The timing of the dishes was ever so slightly off, but I think that was down to the group rather than any problem with the restaurant itself..
Bagna cauda with delicious vegetables
An antipasto of assorted vegetables that you dip into a warm anchovy sauce. I had a small complaint about the freshness of the vegetables, but they were just a little less fresh; the flavor was fine. Dipped in that salty anchovy sauce, they were really moreish. They put taste ahead of formality, and the portions leave nothing to complain about either, so I’m only grateful. You may not be able to tell from the photo, but the anchovy sauce sits on a little burner-like setup with a flame underneath.
Cold antipasto: carpaccio of kinmedai from Tateyama, Chiba, with a sauce rich in clam essence
The restaurant is named Acqua Pazza after the fish dish of the same name. Which tells you it’s a place that’s confident about its fish. It really brought out the flavor of the ingredients. If you don’t like fish, you should order the pasta lunch rather than the course, because most of the course here is fish. The kinmedai carpaccio left nothing to complain about either, in freshness or flavor. Word is that just as there are fish-focused Italian places there are also meat-focused ones, so maybe next time I’ll go there and compare ^_^
This is the antipasto that comes with the pasta lunch
It’s in no way inferior to the kinmedai carpaccio. You could even say it was tastier. I should have written down the names of the dishes.. The 3,600-yen pasta lunch is just an antipasto plus two pastas, so I’d wondered whether it was a bit pricey, but with food like this it’s completely justified.
Warm antipasto: confit of ayu from Wakayama with a refreshing cucumber sauce
Ayu is an early-summer delicacy that’s only around briefly, from May to July. I’m still a novice, so this was my first time eating ayu, and after one bite I was simply amazed that a fish could taste this good. The cucumber sauce didn’t taste bad at all, yet it almost felt like it was getting in the way. The flesh has a contradictory flavor, delicate and rich at the same time. I thought maybe it was just me, but everyone at the table was impressed too. And as we marveled, I realized, ah.. summer is almost here.
Spaghettini with sakura shrimp from Suruga Bay, with slightly bitter fukinoto (butterbur bud) fritto
Plenty of sakura shrimp went into this. It’s a polished pasta, soaked through with that deep yet clean crustacean flavor, though because it leans on a single ingredient it came across as a little heavy or one-note. Not enough to be a real flaw, of course. It’s something I notice every time I cook at home: skimp on the ingredients and you’ll never get a tasty dish. Spices and seasonings just add a little extra flavor. In that sense, I got the impression this place is about taste rather than formality.
Today’s pasta 1
A seafood pasta with squid. The pasta of the day on the pasta lunch isn’t named on the menu, so this may be slightly off. The seafood was cooked perfectly, but the noodles were boiled to a truly artistic degree. In some ways it tasted even better than the sakura shrimp from the course. I’d been curious what kind of pasta you’d get with the slightly cheaper pasta lunch, and what came out was really satisfying. The price does seem to have gone up since before, though..
Konatsu granita
A sorbet served as a palate cleanser before the main. They serve it even with the small course. Konatsu is a citrus a bit like a mandarin or orange, a specialty of Kochi Prefecture. The sorbet did refresh my mouth, but the portion was so tiny that it didn’t make much more of an impression than that.
Today’s pasta 2
A Bolognese. A textbook Bolognese at that. The well-reduced meat sauce was a perfect match for the pappardelle. Once in Korea I ordered Bolognese and got meat-sauce spaghetti, and I thought, ah, now this is true fusion. Well, I like meat-sauce spaghetti too, so I didn’t really mind, but I just wish that at an Italian restaurant you’d get proper Italian food, as you’d expect.
Acqua pazza
The signature dish the restaurant is named after. It looked stunning. That one fish serves two. Clams, olives, tomatoes and so on go in as well, but apparently the yellow broth comes almost entirely from the fish itself.
The acqua pazza, portioned out
We split it between the two of us. It’s an amazing dish, good enough to name the restaurant after, but there were so many bones that it was a pain to eat. Especially if you want to eat it with the fresh olives and tomatoes, you have to pick out the bones and gather up the flesh first, which made it even more of a hassle. I don’t think I’ll order it next time.
Strawberries with aceto balsamico, vanilla gelato and zabaione sauce
Far tastier than it looks. The brightness of the vinegar brings out even more of the rich ice cream and the fresh strawberries. A very satisfying dessert. I do wish it had been plated a bit more prettily, though.
Assorted desserts
This is the dessert that comes with the pasta lunch. They’re ordinary items, so nothing with a special impact, but it all tasted good overall.
A spoonful of honey
It came to go in the herbal tea. Very classy.
Citrus orange
The herbal tea I ordered. Supposedly it helps clear your head. The cup was lovely too, and it made a fine end to the meal. Still, I think Argo’s herbal tea, brewed from freshly picked leaves, was a little tastier.
Sweets to go with the tea
Every single dish felt carefully chosen. It left me with the impression of a wonderful restaurant. But rather than making me want to come back, it made me want to live in this neighborhood. Honestly, if there were a restaurant like this near my place, I’d be a regular.