Last week I made a quick trip to Tokyo. I saw friends and visited some good restaurants, and Tokyo really is great ^_^ I should go more often.
The first place I headed to as soon as I arrived in Tokyo was Aroma Classico, an Italian restaurant in Shinagawa. It’s the sister restaurant of Aroma Fresca, the Italian place in Azabu-juban famous for its legendary value for money. I’d love to go to Aroma Fresca too, but it’s very hard to book, and the sister restaurant’s reputation is every bit as good as the main one’s. It also has a reasonably priced lunch course and a good location, so I’d wanted to go for a long time. This time I went with a younger friend of mine who got married and now lives in Tokyo, and his wife.
The entrance
It isn’t that far from Shinagawa Station, but the location is a little hard to find. Even the Tabelog map I looked up on my iPhone showed it in a strange place, so I took a bit of a detour.
Place setting
The service and atmosphere are slightly casual without losing their elegance. The view through the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out over a park in the middle of Shinagawa, is quite something too. It seems like a nice place to set the mood on a date. Sure enough, the window tables were taken by – middle-aged – couples drinking wine and taking their time over a leisurely afternoon. The pasta lunch is 3,000 yen, or 4,800 yen with a main added. For this kind of atmosphere, that price is so reasonable I was grateful. The staff didn’t push wine on us either, which made me like the place even more.
Olive leaf tea
Apparently it’s brewed from olive leaves – it felt like a sort of Mediterranean barley tea? I suppose you could call it an Italian restaurant’s special touch.
White truffle
Some pricey ingredients made an appearance. They brought it out to ask whether I’d like some shaved over the wild pigeon gibier I’d ordered. The price was about 2,000 yen… I hesitated a little and then asked them to go ahead, but maybe because the truffle was only so-so, it wasn’t worth the money.
Bread
Pretty good, as bread goes…
Salad of wild yellowtail and kohlrabi
This was the starter I ordered. The yellowtail comes thinly sliced, but personally I think it would have been better a bit thicker. That’s probably just because I’m used to Japanese-style yellowtail sashimi. The sauce had a nice lively tang, which made it a good appetizer.
Fritto of monkfish and Hirata red scallion with marinara sauce
“Ankō” here isn’t sweet red bean paste (anko) but monkfish. It’s fried together with Hirata red scallions. The cooking was very good, but compared with Japanese monkfish dishes it felt a little lacking.
Okinawan agu pork sausage with balsamic sauce and polenta
This sausage was delicious too. I’m not sure there was any need to turn such good-quality pork into sausage… Anyway, the portion was big and the sauce and potatoes were beautifully done, so I was impressed. Anyone with a small appetite would probably be full on the starter alone.
They said that if we ordered two pastas, they would split them so the three of us could each have two plates, so we asked them to do that.
Pasta of the day: cream pasta with asparagus, scallops and truffle
Lots of truffle here too… Lovely aroma. When I brought up truffles, my friend’s wife told him to hurry up and eat it all. Good times for him. (When will my good times ever come…) The pasta itself felt a little overcooked. Mainstream taste, you might say. I prefer it a bit thinner and with more bite.
Risotto with house-made salsiccia, wood ear mushrooms, bietola and savoy cabbage
We didn’t actually order this mushroom risotto because we wanted it -_-; we ordered it because my friend’s wife can’t eat fish. It didn’t taste bad, but it lacked a bit of impact.
Come to think of it, even if you order the 3,000-yen pasta lunch you get this far, so the amount of food is by no means small. Apart from me, everyone was already knocked out… The mains were only just starting, and it seems we’d gone too hard at the start.
Today’s special: wild pigeon gibier topped with white truffle
Gibier is a delicacy you can only eat in winter, when the hunting season opens. Supply is unreliable, so not many restaurants serve it, and even the ones that do rarely put it on the regular menu – you only get to taste it if they happen to get some in that day. I couldn’t pass up a chance like this, so I ordered it, and as I expected I was completely satisfied. The seasoning was a little strong, but it had a wild freshness you can’t get from farmed meat. On top of that, a single bird gave all sorts of different cuts, each with its own distinctive flavor, which was a real pleasure. Winter really is gibier season…
Aroma Classico-style bistecca of heifer beef
It’s an Italian-style steak grilled over charcoal, and you can only order it for two or more. The photo doesn’t really show the size, but even the smallest piece is about as big as a main course at most restaurants. It looked like about 250 grams per person… After being overwhelmed by the size, I tasted it, and the flavor was incredible too. I’d had Kobe beef steak and steak from Akage wagyu (Japanese Brown cattle), said to be fully pasture-raised, so I thought I’d pretty much covered every kind of steak, but I was wrong. I’d expected it to be juicy, with the fat brought out perfectly by the charcoal, but the chew that came from such a thick cut had a power I can’t put into words. It was a truly masculine steak. There was so much of it that I had no choice but to finish two-thirds myself, and I felt a little sorry for having such a delicious steak all to myself. Which is why you have to keep in training…
Lemon sorbet served to refresh the palate
At first I thought it was a candy, but apparently it’s sorbet. They gave it to us to cleanse the palate partway through the steak, but I only noticed it when I was nearly done… The sourness of the lemon wakes you right up.
Finally, dessert time. This place doesn’t charge extra for dessert and there’s no tax on top either, so it really puts no strain on your wallet. When was the last time I went to a place this good…
Mont Blanc
As good as the ones sold at famous shops. It left me wanting a little more, but I’ll just have to come back another time and try a proper course.
Orange crème caramel
This one was just so-so… The others said it was too sweet, but to me it was ordinary…
Tiramisu
It has coffee in it, so I only had a little taste, but it’s very well made.
Herbal tea and petits fours
The mint tea was good too. I really wanted to relax and take my time, but my schedule that day was so packed that we left quickly. It’s a restaurant I’d like to come back to with a meat-loving friend or a girlfriend (whenever that may be…). My capable younger friend, who has a beautiful wife, has just started a new life in Japan, so to celebrate I happily treated everyone that day. It was a day that reminded me once again that the better the restaurant, the more fun it is to treat.