Very nice experience. Nice food, well made. Nice meat. Nice company too. Maybe the chef’s dirty t-shirt looked a little unprofessional.

+3

[A hidden Italian gem that suddenly appears in a shopping arcade! Authentic cuisine drawing on Italian tradition, yet the prices are glitched! Insanely satisfying deliciousness (⑅•ᴗ•⑅) The pairing is great too!] ⁡ First visit to 'forare,' a hidden Italian spot where you can enjoy modern, innovative dishes⭐️ ⁡ With a name meaning 'to pierce, to penetrate, to make a hole,' they pursue dishes that strike a chord in your heart. ⁡ Authentic Italian cuisine using carefully selected ingredients from all over Japan and seasonings imported directly from Italy. While drawing on Italian tradition, they serve dishes using a wide range of techniques such as charcoal grilling and straw grilling. ⁡ ——Visit—— Weekday dinner ⁡ ——Reservation—— ⁡ Reserved ——Occasion—— Solo ——Cost—— ⁡ ￥8,000〜￥10,000 ——What I ate—— ⁡ ▶Corn Cappuccino Barley Tea A chilled Gold Rush corn soup done cappuccino-style. With a barley tea and licorice sauce. The sweetness of the Gold Rush, the richness of the barley tea, and the faint spiciness of licorice spread out — sooo good! The cheese and pepper cantucci are like a little snack♡ ⁡ ▶Horse Mackerel Zucchini Kiwi Kiwi, basil, and almond sauce, sautéed zucchini, horse mackerel with seared skin, and shikuwasa foam. The horse mackerel was thick and fatty, packed with umami!!! With the refreshing shikuwasa, the crisp texture and sweetness of the zucchini, and the kiwi coming through clearly, the overall balance is great( ' ' )♡ ⁡ ▶Ayu Melon Sansho Berries Ayu confit served as a salad with melon, fennel, and cucumber. Sprinkled with buckwheat groats, shiso, and sansho berries. The bitterness of the ayu with the juicy sweetness of the melon spreading out — a combination I'd never had before, but delicious(*'▽'*)♪ ⁡ ▶Toasted Wheat Sardine Tea Handmade pasta made with toasted wheat flour. Green tea added to a Sicilian-style sardine sauce for a Japanese touch. Enjoying the toasty aroma and faint bitterness, the umami spreads softly — super delicious(๑˙꒳​˙๑) ⁡ ▶Risotto Edamame Beer Beef cheek braised in beer, the meat is fall-apart tender♡ The richness and umami of the braise plus the flavor of edamame — tasty! The cheese flavor and the sansho berry accent are the best too( ' ' )♡ ⁡ ▶Hamo Paprika Grilled Eggplant Hamo fritto with grilled eggplant purée, paprika agrodolce, yogurt sauce, rakkyo, and dill. The refined umami of the hamo is tightly concentrated, with toasty flavors and acidity spreading out — delicious(⑉• •⑉)♡ ⁡ ▶Omi Duck Beets Treviso Beets, framboise sauce, treviso, and okahijiki. The duck has rich umami and the fat is sooo sweet!! The more you chew, the more the flavor spreads(⑅•ᴗ•⑅) ⁡ ▶Shaved Ice Plum Yakult Yakult panna cotta with red shiso and cardamom shaved ice. The plum is juicy and sweet with the Yakult flavor spreading out, and the cardamom aroma with the tartness of red shiso is so good♡ ⁡ ——Menu—— ⁡ ◇◆Dinner menu Summer ￥6,400◆◇ ◇Corn Cappuccino Barley Tea ◇Horse Mackerel Zucchini Kiwi ◇Ayu Melon Sansho Berries ◇Toasted Wheat Sardine Tea ◇Risotto Edamame Beer ◇Hamo Paprika Grilled Eggplant ◇Omi Duck Beets Treviso ◇Shaved Ice Plum Yakult ⁡ ——Service—— ⁡ It's a complete one-person operation, so it was hard to have a leisurely chat, but the service was humble and polite. Gentle, pleasant service. ⁡ ——Value—— ⁡ So satisfying beyond the price that I thought the course price is glitched, and the pairing price is glitched too. ——Atmosphere—— ⁡ A relaxed space with just 8 seats at a large wood-grain counter. It's a high table, and the live feel of watching the cooking right in front of you is really fun. There are plants and such too, which I really love! ⁡ ——Revisit—— ★★★★☆ I'd definitely love to come again

+3

A place in my neighborhood I'd been curious about. Casual yet calm at the same time, I was able to have a lovely time. Above all, the food is outstanding value. The dishes were full of originality and so much effort went into them that it's hard to believe one person runs the place. Even the dessert was wonderful. It seems the course menu changes once every month and a half, so I'm looking forward to going again!

+3

A little south of Miyakojima Station (Osaka Metro). The restaurant sits near the southern end of a run-down shopping arcade. The exterior is unadorned: gray walls, a brown door, a lone outdoor light, and a plate bearing the restaurant's name placed very unobtrusively. That day I had a reservation for 17:30, but when I arrived around 17:15, the outdoor light was already on. This is a bit of a problem. With small restaurants, even before opening, turning on the main power inside for prep or cleaning may, due to how the circuits are wired, also light up the sign and outdoor light. Or there are cases where turning on the outdoor light is the first step in the opening routine, and it stays on while they work. Very rarely, there's also the pattern where an automatic light sensor reacts to cloudy weather and turns on well before opening time. Even if the restaurant thinks it has put out a 'Preparing (Closed)' sign, from a distance the outdoor light makes a strong impression and easily causes misunderstanding. I killed time wandering around the area, and when I came back to the restaurant about 2 minutes early, another group happened to open the door and go in, so I followed them in. Once inside, the large counter table catches your eye. This counter has no back shelf. Normally you might place tableware or ingredient cases there to screen off the kitchen, but there's none of that. As a result, the counter leaves a strong impression. Seating is counter-only, 8 seats. There's also a table immediately to the right of the entrance, but it seemed to be used as a work table. Dried plants (wood objects) are casually placed around the restaurant. Perhaps they felt the white air conditioner would stand out and spoil the look, as it had been concealed. The wall behind the counter is a grayish navy, and the seats are pale purple, maybe. Even so, it's the large counter that really draws the eye. To note my usual particulars: there are things like, please don't put the cloth on top of the espresso machine, and please polish the carafes until they're crystal clear. Normally I give points based on five evaluation criteria, but a while after the course began, it was driven home to me: that kind of evaluation is completely meaningless…. Why I felt that way, I'll explain later. Only courses are served, which makes sense given the owner works alone. When you sit down there's a menu card, and the dish names are very unique. In typical French or Italian cuisine, a menu reads <main ingredient> + <cooking method (sauce/style)>. In Italian, place names like Florentine or Milanese are often included too. But what's written on this menu card is almost nothing but ingredient names. In other words, everything other than the ingredient names has been thoroughly stripped away. That's precisely why you don't know what's coming until the dish is served. I take it as a sign of the owner's confidence: not saying too much and competing solely on the finish of the plate and the ideas behind it. At the very bottom of this menu card was written Piccolo ristorante. Although it's not so strict these days, the hierarchy of Italian establishments goes ristorante, trattoria, osteria, taverna, bar. Judging only by its scale of 8 counter seats, it's the size of a small eatery or a bar, but in calling itself a Ristorante rather than a trattoria or osteria, I sense the owner's aesthetics and pride. This is not a cheap diner or an izakaya. What they offer is uncompromising ristorante cuisine and space — that strong pride comes through. As for the food, I'd like to introduce just two dishes. The first was labeled 'Eggplant, Hamo, Plum.' Hamo is a summer ingredient, but because its flavor is delicate and light, in Japanese cuisine the classic approach is to boost the umami with the bones and trimmings (as dashi) left after honekiri, or with kudzu. But by pairing it with brodo (chicken broth), I sensed a distinctly Italian backbone. At first, looking at this plate, I thought it was a Japanese-Italian fusion dish using hamo, but I was wrong. A chicken broth foundation had been meticulously designed to bring out the umami of hamo, a light, high-end ingredient. The second was a plate labeled 'Squid, Burn, Okra.' 'Burn' refers to a technique called Scordato (スコルダート), cooking all at once at high heat, and as soon as the cooking began, the savory aroma of squid filled the air in an instant. By pairing it with dill, the residual heat of the squid and the temperature of the oil make the dill's essential oils volatilize all at once, spreading that aroma too. It felt so live that I wondered whether they were deliberately controlling the exhaust duct's draw. Before sight or taste, it's your sense of smell that's overwhelmed first. That's when it hit me: this is a stage where the owner puts on a performance. I mentioned at the start that the counter has no back shelf, and precisely because of that, the ingredients and the prep work are all in full view. The 8-seat counter space is itself a stage for a meticulously calculated production designed to awaken the guests' senses. The refined interior and the distinctive atmosphere are all there to enhance that performance. The menu, with nothing but ingredient names tersely listed like a story, is probably also a device to strip away guests' unnecessary preconceptions. Precisely because everyone shares the single story that is the course, the staging of aromas bursting out with the heat of cooking has such a dramatic effect. That's exactly why guests have no need for tactless nitpicking or theorizing. The only way to repay the stunning performance the owner puts on is simply to sharpen all five senses and face each plate presented with complete sincerity. So I'll end my introduction of the food with these two dishes. My feeling, mentioned at the start, that 'the method of scoring on 5 criteria is meaningless' came precisely from this experience. That said, to touch on the alcohol as well: the spumante is fine, but beer is treated as an aperitif. This too is probably the owner's insistence that wine be your main partner during the meal. Since I was mainly looking at the wine, I may have missed something, but I don't think I saw any shochu or whisky. The digestifs were also very extensive. These days more people skip digestifs and many places don't stock them, but in classic Italian dining, digestifs like grappa and limoncello are the final piece that completes the afterglow of the course. Honestly, I was so full I was about to burst, so I didn't end up ordering any…. As for C/P, since the maximum is 5 I gave it a 5, but really, it's not something you can put a number on. The food, the staging, the hospitality, how full I was, and the surprise and excitement — all of it was overwhelming.

+3

フォラーレ, a modern innovative Italian restaurant in Miyakojima. I went on a friend's recommendation. Lunch 3800 yen Dinner full course 6400 yen! I asked for the full course at lunchtime and went with the 7800 yen course with duck → akaushi beef. The restaurant is counter-only with a stylish atmosphere The food, creative dishes using ingredients that evoke summer, was interesting and delicious. Even though it's a one-person operation, the attentiveness was great. The dinner drink pairing was great value at 3800 yen for 5 glasses. I'd like to go again.

+3