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This is the restaurant for you if you like to eat like a bird. An order of marinated tuna and avocado will give you two toothpicks with two small cubes each of both. An order of grilled vegetables with anchovy sauce consists of a small dish of cubed vegetables. And an order of deep-fried shrimp (for about 500 yen nonetheless) is one shrimp. I don’t remember the last time I left a restaurant hungry, but I did this evening.
From the minute I walked in to the restaurant, I had a bad feeling. First, there was a reservation sign with my name and a welcome message. Cheezy. Then when I asked to be moved to one of the two other tables that were free because the person at the table next to us was smoking, they told us they were reserved. When Patrick asked for grapefruit juice, they brought him pineapple juice. They also turned out to be out of both the fried white fish and octopus that were on the regular menu. The icing on the cake was that they wanted to substitute French cheese for the assortment of Spanish cheeses on the menu. When I think Spanish, I think manchego and sangria. They had neither. Very disappointing.
The food, I concede, was solid. And the interior was very chic with a bathroom door that looked like a wine rack. But the final bill was expensive even though I only had one glass of sparkling wine and Patrick had juice. The bottom line was that it just wasn’t comfortable. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the service seemed disingenuous — the tables that I asked to be moved to were unoccupied until we left. I was so tempted to say something politely sarcastic about it, but as fluently as I speak Japanese, I sadly haven’t mastered that art quite yet. I comforted myself by thinking of how nobody will ever find this restaurant on the Web even if they tried because “As” isn’t exactly an uncommon word.
If you’re in the mood for Spanish/tapas, take the extra few minutes to go to Bar Arietta on Meiji Dori on the other side of Hiroo. Their service is infinitely more sincere, the food is good, and the ambiance comfortable. Best of all, they have excellent manchego and sangria.
As
1-13-6 Nishi-azabu
Minato-ku
(Next to Gonpachi)
Tel: 03-3746-2777
Open:11am-2pm; 7pm-4am