I had been meaning to call the Peafowl to go out during Golden Week. Specifically I was thinking of the 30th, but I started thinking I should rest between some of the other engagements and never called. Then Peacock called in the morning of the 30th, and with a smidgen of serendipity, all was set. […]
Italian
Bigote, Nihonbashi
‘Bigote’, of course, is Italian for ‘bigot’, so it’s no surprise that the ample signage around the door of this otherwise-pleasantly bohemian cafe proudly proclaims “No Lesser Races”. Of course in the absence of specificity about which races that would entail, they seem quite happy to admit anyone for a pleasant sit on the mismatched […]
Goutte d’Or Crattini
On a day as crappy as this, where I labored under a deadline until lunch time (self-imposed, but if we can’t manufacture our own urgency, who can?) and stepped out to find gray everwhere, there was only one solution. Pasta. I thought about a few places I’ve been to before, but ultimately decided to wander […]
- Italian
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di Andoh, Kanda
Even by the standards of a group dinner for 20 people, this casual Italian place was poor. $40 for food plus all-you-can-drink is cheap, sure, but there’s no sense in it if the cost performance is still low. I swear the pizza was premade at someone’s apartment, not in the brick oven pictured on the […]
Kobeya, Otemachi
A weird sort of deja vu, all over again. I could swear that I already wrote about my lunch at Kobeya, which was late last year or early this. I really enjoyed it at the time, despite the obvious failings, and I remembered it fondly enough that I went back again. For the better part […]
- Italian
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Della Collina, Ebisu
Della Collina comes to us via a recommendation from Ponkan, who went there for a work dinner (nice job pulling that one off!). It’s a nice modern Italian place, with ambience and service that will appeal to people with certain quality expectations, and nice food at decent prices. One mildly unfortunate point is that you […]
- Italian
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La Maremma, Otemachi
Even the most obvious things still hold some promise…La Maremma is a recommendation that I received early on in my Otemachi career, and only today did I make use of it. The company was better than the food, as Ricky has changed jobs and found what sounds like a dream situation. Let’s hope it lasts […]
- Italian
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Bosso, Kanda
Well, here’s a funny linguistic point to liven up an otherwise very normal lunch. Bosso sounds Italian (and auto-translates to ‘boxwood’, but never trust an auto-translator, I say) but in this case has the pleasing double meaning of implying 房総, the old name for Chiba, where the restaurant sources its products. (Yes, I had lunch […]
- Ginza
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Vinorio, Ginza
Dinner with the Swans was supposed to be a fairly quick one, followed by live music. Instead it stretched out a bit and became the main event of the evening – partly our inability to order decisively, partly the speed of service. If you were doing nothing of an evening except dining, I would say […]
- bar
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Medusa, Ebisu
‘Sparkly’ was the order of the day, and that means ‘dining bar’ to me. This place practically jumped off the map, being almost new and also right behind Ebisu’s west exit. The atmosphere was all that, and oddly enough, the food was quite good. As with most big dining bars, there are quite a few […]