Thinning wallet...

It seems that Saturdays has turned into my "Gourment Adventure Day". On a whim, I decided to try out this pasta eatery that I saw in the far corner of Takashimaya's food alley. These are called "デパ地下" or literally "Department store basement" in Japanese.

I was first attracted by their open kitchen concept, where I can see the Chefs (there were 3 of them) fighting a constant battle against an army of slip orders. One chef will deftly start to hit 2-3 fyring pans on the electric stove, toss some olive oil followed by some garlic and onion, and add the various sauce base (tomato, cream) into the fragrantly caramelizing ingredients. At the same time, he will be grabbing pastas and reheat them in boiling water, before adding them to the pans, and passing them to the second chef for other ingredients. The third chef is in charge of passing the dish to the servers, and 'flash washing' the pans for the next dish.

I decided to try their Meatball Linguine in Arabiatta sauce. They had an interesting order system where you can basically pick a type of pasta out of four, the sauce to go with it, and the 'toppings'. Then they assigned me to a seat, and I waited for my pasta.

My pasta arrived, steaming in red tomato sauce and accompanied by 5 meatballs. I twirled the pasta on my fork, huffed and puffed on the juicy bundle to cool it down, and took a bite. Mamma mia! It was hot! (spicy!), but the pasta was al'dente and tasted good. The meatballs was unfortunately small, and kind of dry.

It turned out that "Arabiatta" means spicy tomato sauce, and this was actually quite an interesting experience, being my first ever spicy pasta. For $9.00, it is a pretty good buy, though this would be my first and last Arabiatta - spicy food is not my forte. The name of the place is "Ambush", and it is just beside the Hokkaido Romankan - a katsu (カツ) eatery, which seems to make a good target for my next adventure.