The streets around Roppongi Crossing are a mess; I was noticing today that there are far more sandwichboard lunch advertisements than I ever thought before. I don’t know what these places are, and at this point I’m never going to find out! Giliola is a little more notable – it faces Roppongi Dori on the East side of the crossing, near Pronto, Sushi Zanmai, and Badd Girlz Campus Cafe. It has a nice trattoria vibe going from the street.
Inside, the vibe is a little wacky. The kitchen is in the front, with a narrow hallway, then a main room that’s bright and cheerful and tiled and Italiante and usually full, and a back room that’s a little dim and cramped – like a bedroom that happens to have some tables. Today the front room was empty, but they insisted on shunting us into the back room anyway. Grrr…
I’m not quite sure what the attraction is here. It’s a little like Del Sole in that you can get surprisingly large portions of low-quality pasta at reasonable prices. Sometimes that’s an attraction in itself, I guess. Y1200 gets you stale bread, a small salad, a large pasta, a tiny dessert, and a tolerable coffee in a Lavazza cup. The pastas sound OK on the menu in a standard way (mushroom bacon creem, that sorta thing), and Y150 gets you a truly tremendous super-sizing. There’s also a lasagne offering, which is what I really went in search of, and also a steak option where you get a quite large steak (I’ve seen it. It’s big. Must be mediocre, ne?) and a half-size pasta for Y2000.
Service is a bit pissy.
Again, Tabelog gets it right…
03-3405-4151