Address - Tokyo-to, Musashino-shi, Kichi Joji Minami-cho 2-1-31 Frente Kichi Joji Building B1F Opening hours - Every day from 11:00 to 23:00 Map - Directions, this time: it's right in the basement of Kichi Joji station, next to the Inokashira Park exit Telephone - 0422 49-2005 Menu - In Japanese and Italian CC - OK.

Osteria Superbacco is a brand new restaurant in Kichi Joji created by the same people responsible for what is, to me at least, unquestionably and by far Shinjuku's best and most authentic Italian (more precisely, Venetian) restaurant: .
And they are so similar to be non-identical twins (for more details about Superbacco, you should therefore read Il Bacaro's review).
Both are Venetian, both therefore specialize in seafood, both have acorner where you can eat while standing, both offer stuff usually available only in Venice, both are way too cheap for what they offer, both are 100% authentic (and it's a native of Veneto who says so).
Osteria Superbacco is even better than Il Bacaro: its menu is richer in quantity and quality, and just as affordable. The meat section is a good example, since it offers chicken, duck, rabbit, beef, lamb and pork. How's that for variety?
Superbacco, being much bigger and being basically one single room (see photo), feels comfier and airier than Il Bacaro.
Among pasta entries you will find several known quantities like puttanesca, amatriciana (really Roman dishes, but what the fuck ...) and linguine with lobster for just 1000 yen, but I invite you to leave all caution at home, take this rare opportunity and order all the stuff you don't know. How often can you eat in Venice without disturbing your passport? Superbacco is indeed that good.
So, order a spriz, and not a beer. Don't forget baccala' or mixed seafood appetizers, have pasta e fagioli rather than pasta alle vongole, and as a digestive get a sgroppino. An excellent meal will cost you about 3000 yen with one or two drinks.
Dixi, August 2003

ABSOLUTELY FREE BONUS FILM REVIEW!!!

Want to immensely enrich yourself investing just 3 thousand yen? Visit Amazon's site and buy Baraka's DVD (after checking that it is the new widescreen anamorphic version).
Like a Martin Luther King speech and any true work of art, this mesmerizing documentary is really undescribable: the only accurate description of the work is the work itself. And Baraka is great art, no doubt about it. And not only, but I believe it's the kind of masterpiece that can be made but once. Director Ron Fricke, who is working on a new project called Samsara, will almost surely fail.
A successor of Koyaanisqatsi, but much superior to it, Baraka looks at the world through splendid images finding infinity, time, nature and many other big words, plus material and moral misery, affection, dignity, children and every ingredient of the human condition without ever uttering a word or being sentimental, but always accompanied by a soundtrack that can only described as perfect. A trivial scene, like two mangy donkeys pulling a cart up a slope in Calcutta or a trio of perfectly still Cambodian soldiers, accompanied by this very special music (among others, Dead Can Dance's Host of Seraphim: press here to listen) will become epic and immensely moving right in front of your eye, and you won't even know why. I have seen the scene a dozen times, yet "Calcutta Foragers" still almost brings tears to my eyes, every time.