Agio - Italian
Shinjuku

Address Tokyo-to, Shinjuku-ku, Shinjuku 3-14-1, Isetan Building, 7th Floor Opening hours - 11:00 to 23:00 Map No. Seventh floor of the Isetan Building in Shinjuku Telephone 3354-6720 Menu - In Italian and Japanese CC - Yes

Francesco's Note:

Agio is part of the Mikasa Kaikan group, whose French restaurant was reviewed for us by Claus P. Regge.

Review by Junko Okabe
Ghosted by Yours Truly

Agio is an Italian restaurant that gets a lot of attention, these days. Apparently every day at noon in front of it a queue forms, but I honestly find it difficult to understand why.
Agio looks like a coffee shop that wants to put on airs, and tables are too close to each other for real comfort.
My friend and I went there attracted by the idea of eating food cooked in a brick-oven, but were disappointed by all their offerings.
We first had a tomato salad: slices of tomato with an anchovy and a leaf of basil, plus oil, salt and pepper. Definitely insufficient.
We had then appetizers, which included Japanese daikon, hardly an Italian ingredient. And that's no problem, but the diminutive size and undistinguished taste of those two overpriced dishes were.
The mozzarella pizza we ordered might have been cooked in a brick-oven, but really you couldn't tell. Plus, it was crusty and dry, and for some reason in it there were mushrooms sauteed in butter, hardly a taste suitable to something as Mediterranean as pizza.
We then got to the main dish, their famous fish cooked in the oven. It was good, but this is no surprise: it's difficult to completely spoil fish.
We ended up with a cheese soufflè that looked and tasted exactly like Cozy Corner's cheese cake. Cost: five thousand yen, surely too much considering the modest skills of their cooks. In Agio's case, one visit is enough.