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Dining Diaries XXX


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Hiro Shinkawa’s HUGE Corporation has set up another restaurant, Rigoletto Bar and Grill – this time on Roppongi Hills. Beautifully designed, with an International menu, this place is destined to be successful! Ordering a few “Piccolo Tapas” (all ¥300) with our aperitif, e.g. garlic toast and caponata, and Tapas (¥500) – oven-roasted white asparagus with egg, thin-sliced Iberico chorizo, and hot chicken tortilla roll – we are now set to study the rest of the menu. There is a bagna cauda that comes in three sizes (¥800-¥1,900) or a carpacchio (¥950) under the Salads header. Next a selection of Neapolitan pizza (6 inch from ¥750, 10 inch from ¥1,200), followed by beef burgers – “Rigoletto” (lettuce, tomato, grilled onions, thousand island dressing, cheddar cheese, ¥1,200), and “Popeye” with spinach and mushrooms (¥1,350). The Pasta section offers spaghettini, linguine, and pappardelle with various sauces; our favorite was the quattro pomodori arrabiata (¥700). A selection of main dishes are tandoori chicken salad (¥1,500), paella with blue mussels and clams (¥1,600), premium beef steak (150g ¥1,800), or grilled premium pork (1,800). Rigoletto has two wine lists: 30 different bottles for ¥2,500 each, e.g. Dreamtime Pass Sauvignon Blanc, or Primitivo Manduria, and the Special Wine Collection with goodies like Kim Crawford “Flower” Sauvignon Blanc (Marlborough, NZ, ¥8,900), or Francis Ford Coppola’s “Directors Cut” Cabernet Sauvignon (¥8,900). All foods arrives very quickly, we therefore recommend to order in “batches” – first the appetizers/tapas, then the pizza or pasta, and main dishes after that.


Roppongi Hills West Walk 5F, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, 03-6438-0071, www.rigoletto.jp
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  • 4 weeks later...
...find Italian a bit samey samey ........

That may be if you eat at the samey samey restaurant over again, or if the restaurant has bastardized the Italian cooking. If you are in Italy (and where in Italy?) you won't eat the same thing again in a year. (Of course it's pasta with every meal, but it will be a different pasta, different shape, different sauce, each time.)

But of course I love Indian food, especially South Indian. I Masala Dosa!

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I cant stand Pasta. To me it's just a mouthful of nothing. I've tried to like it but the majority got left on the plate. :(

You have been unlucky. Properly made it is very nice.

I made todays evening meal (as I do most days) and we had home made pasta (white flour, a drop of olive oil, a fresh egg from next doors hens, and a desertspoon of water), with a sauce made of home grown Gardeners Delight tomatoes (straight out of the greenhouse),fresh home grown Basil (straight out of the greenhouse), minced pork (local fed and killed, from the farm butchers shop just up the road, a good generous slurp of cheap Aldi sherry and some chicken stock powder.Oh and a couple of spring onions.

It went down so very easily.

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I cant stand Pasta. To me it's just a mouthful of nothing. I've tried to like it but the majority got left on the plate. :(

You have been unlucky. Properly made it is very nice.

I made todays evening meal (as I do most days) and we had home made pasta (white flour, a drop of olive oil, a fresh egg from next doors hens, and a desertspoon of water), with a sauce made of home grown Gardeners Delight tomatoes (straight out of the greenhouse),fresh home grown Basil (straight out of the greenhouse), minced pork (local fed and killed, from the farm butchers shop just up the road, a good generous slurp of cheap Aldi sherry and some chicken stock powder.Oh and a couple of spring onions.

It went down so very easily.

I've tried it made by several friends and tried it in restaurants and I just can't get along with it I'm afraid. A friend of ours said it's not so much the pasta but the sauce that it is served with that gives it the appeal. Well, I must have tried it with just about every sauce available and I just don't like the stuff. :huh:

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A friend of ours said it's not so much the pasta but the sauce that it is served with that gives it the appeal.

I think you friend is right up to a point. I would certainly not sit down to just a bowl of pasta, from any source, Bland would be a flattering description. But there is a world of difference between the pre-made crap that bares the label of pasta and the real freshly prepared stuff.

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Linguine, a few splashes of extra good olive oil, a few thin shavings of truffle, likewise of Parmagiano Reggiano and black pepper - heavenly.

I'm heading home - that's what I am going to do right away. (Except I don't have fresh truffles; truffle-flavored olive oil will have to do.)

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Well, that was the plan, anyway...

Instead we ended up in a new Italian restaurant named Bergamo, where we had chilled fedelini with extra virgin olive oil, crushed fruits tomatoes, and sliced peaches. With almost 39° outside, chilled pasta and/or soups are my favorites.

You may wonder - what are "fruits tomatoes"? I cannot find any reference on the Internet on these. It's a kind of small, extra tasty tomatoes, grown in several volcanic regions in Japan. They are extremely popular for salads or chilled pasta sauces. A bit expensive too - about ¥400 ~ ¥500 a piece!

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