Sometimes it's a bit difficult to categorize a restaurant into our cuisine type classification. Wanoba is one of them. This time we have marked it for both "Japanese casual" and "International cuisine".
The restaurant Wanoba is named as "Japanesque Bistro" by itself. It takes "bistro" or French style casual restaurant with a bar counter and it offers plates as starter, main dish and dessert in casual atmosphere. The dishes are suit for sharing by two or more number of people and for having with a glass of wine.
Look at the menu list carefully and we found that the restaurant focuses on Japaneses ingredients or takes some Japanese flavour into their European style plates.
Let's see the examples we had with photos. Sorry the quality of photos are not perfect this time though.
Starter
Assortment of "Obanzai" (vegetable side dishes cooked in home-made style from Kyoto)
Cooked eggplants and cucumber with dashi stock soup (left in the photo)
and
Cooked potato and minched tuna balls (right)
Both are well cooked into tender texture and flavour.
Our second dish
"Fried" pumpkin gnocchi with anchovy sauce
Sounds like Italian food totally?
Pumpkin (or squash) is also often used in Japanese cuisine.
The unique "fried" gnocchi is never oily as we had imagined.
It is crispy like "tempura".
Main dish
Rolled "Hyuga" chicken and "hakusai" (Chinese cabbege)
"Hyuga" from Miyazaki, Kyushu is a brand of good quality chicken.
Again the way of cooking is Western style but it features Japanese ingredients.
Another Pasta...
This is the dish we liked the most on this day.
Peperoncino spaghetti with "Edo-mae anago" (Edo style conger)
The simple and popular Italian pasta
arranged with the Japanese ingredient, grilled conger fish.
They are modern style of "East meets West"!!
So they will match well both with wine and Japanese sake or shochu (distilled sake).
It could be a good choice when you would like to have both Japanese and Western style food and think over between these two.
To be an important point, Wanoba aims to re-dicover and introduce the beauty and excellence of Japan. Not only through the ingredients, the modern Japanese style bistro also introduces Japanese fine tablewares and fixtures. It means plates, glass and lamps you can find at the restaurant are also selected Japanese craftworks from that point.
Wanoba is located in Ebisu, which is one stop from Shibuya by Yamanote-line. It is within walking distance from Westin Hotel Tokyo and is not far from Roppongi or Shinagawa by taxi.
Restaurant name: Wanoba
Address: 3-1-1 Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Official site: http://www.wanoba.com
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