A note on the words: zeppoline are small balls of yeasted dough, dropped into hot oil so they puff up — a Neapolitan snack. Aonori is a fine green seaweed, dried and crumbled into flakes, and it is also what gets dusted over takoyaki, the round battered octopus balls sold at Japanese street stalls. Sawara is Spanish mackerel, a spring fish here. Hotaru-ika are firefly squid, a thumb-sized species eaten whole. Hirame is flounder and hamaguri is a hard clam prized for the broth it gives off. Kuroge Wagyu is the black-haired Japanese cattle breed that most wagyu beef comes from. A tobidashi-boya is the flat cutout of a running child, arm outstretched, that gets propped by Japanese roadsides to make drivers watch for kids darting out.
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La Brianza on Tabelog (English) — opening hours, payment details and the Japanese address are kept up to date there, not here.
Hey, this is Hangover Meshi. Lunch this time was at La Brianza, a stylish Italian place at Roppongi Hills. I booked it thinking it was inside Roppongi Hills itself, but when I looked the location up properly it turned out to be over on the Keyakizaka side. From Roppongi Hills you cross the bridge and go in the opposite direction from Keyakizaka, and there’s an Enoteca — the restaurant is right next to it.
There’s a tobidashi-boya standing there, for some reason.
Makes a good landmark!
Inside, we were shown to a table for four. It isn’t a very big place. The windows let in so much light that the whole room is bright. You can apparently eat out on the terrace as well, though people walking past might bother you a little — it’s literally a Hills walkway.
La Brianza Special Menu (9 dishes): the special full course we’re proud of, lunch only — 8,800 yen
Regionale (8 dishes): a lunch-only chef’s-choice course, just right for a small indulgence — 6,600 yen
Provare (7 dishes): our house specialty, a pasta you choose yourself, a main and an after-meal drink — 4,500 yen
The lunch courses run from 4,500 yen up to 8,800 yen depending on how many dishes you get. This time I picked the 8,800 yen course! And since they said you could upgrade the meat for another 1,000 yen, I went ahead and asked for that as well.
So, the first thing to arrive was this.
They’re shaped like takoyaki, but pop one in and the texture is chewy and airy, with a lovely aonori flavor.
Given the aonori, I decided they weren’t all that far from takoyaki after all.
Asparagus and caviar! You take the whole spoonful in one bite. The asparagus is boiled soft and the salt of the caviar lands just right. A light little dish, but delicious! I should have ordered an aperitif to go with it (I can’t drink, though).
I can’t drink at lunch, so I asked for a grapefruit juice.
Sawara carpaccio. I wonder whether sawara is still in season around now — whichever restaurant I go to, the fish seems to be sawara. The gentle acidity of the dressing, the vegetables and the sawara all come together cleanly in one dish. It’s lightly seasoned, so you really taste the ingredients themselves.
Next out was the house specialty here at La Brianza: truffle and egg baked in the oven.
It comes out in something like a small gratin dish, and they shave truffle over it right in front of you, on and on. The good smell of truffle drifts up while they’re still shaving. Then you take a bite and — mm, that’s good. It doesn’t taste as relentlessly of truffle as it looks like it will; what comes forward is the mellowness of the soft-set egg. They told me to mix it well, and that perfectly judged soft egg tangling with the cheese is delicious!
A light chilled pasta with fresh noodles as thick as udon, plus hotaru-ika and okra.
The chewy noodles felt less like pasta and more like udon, honestly.
A warm appetizer of hirame and hamaguri. The hamaguri broth is in there too — nice.
This is the wagyu sirloin that costs the extra 1,000 yen. The menu said something about it being handled by Sakaeya, but is this really sirloin?
The texture is more like tenderloin. Lean red meat: you taste the savor of the beef strongly, but there’s almost no fat to it.
Once you get to nine dishes, even with each one being just a little, it does properly fill you up! It might be a good place for someone who wants a slow, elegant lunch on a weekday, but the usual Italian standards don’t turn up here, so it may be hard to use as an everyday spot. If the wind dropped and the weather were a bit nicer, eating outside could be good too. Maybe I’ll come back once the season changes.
La Brianza (Italian / Roppongi Station, Azabu-juban Station, Nogizaka Station)
Tabelog lunch rating ★★★☆☆ 3.6
I ate here and paid for it myself. Nothing on this site is a comped meal.
One more for the road?
