| Restaurant Review |
By Beau Miller
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Diya
Find a sweet deal on Indian fare at this first-rate
Roppongi Hills restaurant
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| Koji Nomura |
Why take a vacation to Southern Asia when Roppongi Hills is right next door? The B1 floor of RH’s Hillside area offers an international culinary tour with side-by-side-by-side restaurants serving up Thai, Indonesian and Indian delicacies. Among them is Diya, with a Northern Indian dinner course fit for
a Bollywood star that’s as affordable as it is decadent.
The restaurant has a warm and welcoming vibe. Seating areas include stand-alone tables at the front and rear, long booths along the walls, and an elegant, semi-circular table under a classic chandelier. Graceful artwork from the Subcontinent creates an effect that’s at once classic and modern.
In no time, the attentive staff arrives with a menu and a smile, and on our many visits it has never been difficult to decide on Diya’s Course Menu (¥3,500), with the added option of 90 minutes of bottomless wine, beer and cocktails (for an unbeatable ¥1,500). The feast begins with Colonial Chicken Puffs—savory tarts filled with chicken (or a vegetarian version with corn)—and continues with either Goan sesame prawns or deliciously geometric, piping hot samosas. Next up are several plates of the Diya salad: simple greens topped with cottage cheese and drizzled with a lemon-based dressing. Finally, the curries arrive—of which one of our favorites is the spinach and cheese sag paneer, which pairs well with the saffron rice and flavorful raisin and nut Kabuli naan bread. The meal concludes with mango mousse, and of course, chai tea.
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For a more bountiful course, try the Chef’s Tasting Menu (¥4,500), wherein starter pastries are replaced by marinated tandoori prawns, and the meal includes Bukhara lamb chops and Biryani fried rice.
The kitchen also recently began offering a Hills Special Course (¥5,500), which essentially offers all of the above, plus a few extras. For our money, though, the standard course menu, paired with ample quantities of the house wine and pints of ice-cold Kirin, is always too good a deal to pass up. (For those wishing to add Kingfisher to the nomihodai drink list, another ¥500 will let you do just that.)
As might be expected from the location, the service at Diya is first-rate. After hearing enough “muzukashii” responses to last
a lifetime, we wholeheartedly appreciate the pains taken by the staff to accommodate everyone from big drinkers to strict vegetarians. With its elegant atmosphere, ground-central location, delicious and affordable cuisine and friendly staff, Diya caters to the Bollywood star in us all.
B1 Roppongi Hills Hillside, 6-10-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku. Tel: 03-6438-1177. Open daily 11am-11pm (LO 10pm). Nearest stn: Roppongi. http://r.gnavi.co.jp/b822100
When popular restaurant Roti closed its Harumi Triton Square branch in March, there were a lot of sad diners. Fortunately, a new and exciting restaurant and wine bar has opened to take its place… or perhaps we should say “dramatic,” since that is how Garden Bay describes itself. Garden Bay offers modern Italian cuisine in a casual style at reasonable prices. The dinner menu is quite extensive. For starters, you can pick from carpaccio, tomato and basil salad, pancetta, terrine, or bacon and egg salad, for ¥680 to ¥1,380. For entrees, Garden Bay offers lots of grilled meats, seafood, pasta, rice dishes and some vegetarian fare. No entree item costs more than ¥2,400, and there is an ample selection of red and white wines from Italy, Spain, France, Argentina and Australia to go with your dinner.
The restaurant is also popular with the lunchtime crowd.
Sets, which change daily, include pasta, a rice dish and a one-plate combination of salad, rice and meat. Of course, no meal is complete without dessert, and Garden Bay offers the likes of tiramisu, gateau chocolate cake and fruit tart. The restaurant is available for parties as well, starting at ¥2,400 per person for a two-hour period. Having just opened, Garden Bay doesn’t yet have an English menu, but the staff are friendly and floor manager Kanako Uehara is more than happy to help with any inquiries.
Harumi Triton Square 1F, Harumi 1-8-16, Chuo-ku 104-0053. Tel: 03-5547-0561. Open daily 11:30am-11pm. Nearest stn: Kachidoki. www.gardenbay.jp CB
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