Gucci Osteria named Tokyo's top Italian restaurant
A new Gambero Rosso guide ranks Tokyo's Italian kitchens, putting Raffaella De Vita's Ginza menu and a 38th-floor pizza counter at the top of their categories.
Gucci Osteria has topped a new ranking of Tokyo's Italian restaurants, led by Italian chef Raffaella De Vita at its Ginza kitchen inside Massimo Bottura's Francescana Family group.
The ranking, published by Gambero Rosso's Top Italian Restaurants guide on 3 November, gave Gucci Osteria its highest score, Three Forks, for a menu the guide describes as itameshi, blending Italian technique with Japanese ingredients. De Vita, from Foggia, joined the restaurant as senior sous chef five years ago and now runs the kitchen.
Dishes on the menu include wagyu tagliatelle with ragù, wagyu cotoletta, and an Oma tuna pizzaiola. One dish, a tongue-shaped salsa verde, is a direct nod to the Rolling Stones' logo, the guide notes.
Tokyo's Italian kitchens have stopped copying Rome and started arguing with it.
Pizza takes its own prize
Among pizzerias, the guide's top score, Three Slices, went to The Pizza Bar on 38th, run by chef Daniele Cason on the 38th floor of the Mandarin Oriental with a skyline view over the city. The restaurant serves an omakase-style tasting menu of Roman pala-style pizza at a counter seating only eight.
Two Forks went to Il Ristorante di Niko Romito, on the 40th floor of the Bvlgari Hotel and run by chef Mauro Aloisio under Romito's direction; the guide notes Romito scored 99 points in its separate Ristoranti d'Italia guide, a score it says has never been matched. Kurodino, a wine-focused restaurant run by Keisuke Kuroda, a former sommelier at Enoteca Pinchiorri's branches in Florence and Tokyo, also took Two Forks along with a special mention for its wine list.
Tokyo's Italian scene finds its own identity
Gambero Rosso's guide argues Tokyo's Italian cooking has developed what it calls its own personality, built on hundreds of venues ranging from fine dining to rustic trattorias and steady growth recorded year after year. The author writes that it is now easier to find a properly made carbonara in Tokyo than in parts of Rome.
The guide's Tokyo results land in a year when Italian cooking abroad keeps finding new stages, from Mauro Colagreco's new restaurant on Lake Como to the loss this week of Nadia Santini, one of Italy's most influential chefs, whose three-star restaurant Dal Pescatore shaped how that cooking is read at home.
