Al Dente Pasta Restaurant - Shinjuku Stn, Tokyo

As a woman, I find it offensive for restaurants to serve high-calorie food that is tasteless.  What are the benefits of ingesting a heavy cream sauce that has no flavour - an extra 20 minutes to your workout routine or slightly tighter clothing?   For all the enjoyment your tastebuds are experiencing, you might as well be eating plain tofu or rice.  And I hate it when vegetables have been cooked to the point that it's practically pureed or have lost any hope of retaining any flavour; equally bad is trying to find a vegetable to spear your fork with but discovering that the one piece of broccoli on top was a loner.  But whenever I bite into the pasta at Al Dente, the sorrow from terrible, past pasta dishes disappears and the world is a less fearful place. The cream sauces are hearty and the vegetables are flavourful and have more than a cameo appearance.

Al Dente's menu is written in Japanese and Italian.   On the front right side are the starter courses: bruschette (bruschetta), antipasti (appetizer) and insalata (salad); while the left side has the spaghetti alla giapponese (Japanese-style spaghetti which usually has a soysauce base) and determinazione lista (house specials).   On the other side are more spaghetti sauces: salsa pomodoro (tomato sauce), en bianco (white sauces), and alla panna (cream sauces).   All pasta dishes come with 110g of spaghetti.  If you wish for less, you can order the 70g "piccolo" portion and save ¥50.  For heartier eaters, there are "grande" (180g for ¥100 extra) and "doppia" (250g for ¥200 extra) sizes.  This is all written down on the top right corner of the menu.  When ordering, the restaurant forbids you from ordering only one doppia-size dish and sharing it between two adults.

My favourite dish is the Spaghetti Funghi E Panna Acida (¥1050).  It has cooked Japanese mushrooms that are fresh, not canned and the sauce uses sour cream which gives the pasta a wonderful bite.  Japanese mushrooms are amazing and if you've never tried them, this restaurant is a good place to do so.  The Spaghetti alla Carbonara (¥1000) has thick pieces of bacon that have a lot of taste and great texture.  The Lorenza (¥1250) is wonderfully rich but ordering an extra-large size is a bit too much.  From the tomato sauce section in the specials, I recommend the Spaghetti Bolognese E Melanzane which has ground beef and tasty pieces of eggplant.  Help yourself to the grated paremesan, which in the small metal containers every few seats.

Extra-large size Spaghetti Funghi E Panna Acida

Normal-size Spaghetti alla Carbonara

Spaghetti Bolognese E Melanzane

 Unfortunately, the restaurant does allow smoking. The counter seats on the left side are the non-smoking seats while the counter seats and tables on the right side have ashtrays for smokers.  The ventilation system is good enough that you'll never smell the smoke when sitting in the non-smoking section.  Al Dente is located between the ground floor and the basement level- there is a restaurant area mid-level, meanwhile the basement floor leads to a walkway that will take you to the station.  The restaurant is packed during lunch hours, but since the  restaurant is open all day, going late afternoon to avoid the queue is an option.  Al Dente is great place to get tasty pasta at a reasonable price. 


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