Food Boo — Costa Brava

Since coming to Japan in 2004, I have only had two meals that I have found particularly disappointing. Generally, you expect what you pay for, and even at questionably tourist-focused train station eateries, I have had value-for-money, tasty, satisfying meals.

My first disappointing experience was at an underground home style tempura/noodle bar. It looked like a Mom & Pop sorta place, where sometimes you catch the cooks/staff watching TV while waiting for customers. I have no problem with that, as long as the food is good. Mom & Pop shops, in my experience, can either mean they're dedicated, or desperate.

I remember clearly why I was so disappointed with this tempura place. Despite tempura being pushed as its main dish, mine was an oily, soggy, sad, limp piece of resuscitated sea creature and assorted vegetables.

But today's dining experience has pushed my tem-poor-a encounter to second place. For there is a new winner in the Food Boo category.

Meet Pop & Daughter-run Costa Brava. Apparently a Spanish restaurant.

Having been told that this place was worth a visit, J-Ho and I went for dinner there last night. Things were bad from the moment we tried ordering.

We made the mistake of ordering from their set courses. At most restaurants, in fact, probably ALL the restaurants I've been to date, each person can choose a different set course. I didn't see it explicitly mentioned on the menu that we had to choose the SAME course, so was a bit surprised when our waitress told us.

We dubbed our very poorly composed course, the Fartastic Course, as it was a bean overload.

The Good:

• Pretty tasty parma ham (it would have been nice if they'd sliced it in front of us from a big slab of ham so that we know it didn't come out of a packet)
• Red wine braised beef
• Intensely flavoured creme brulee ice cream
• Yummy dessert plate

The Bad:

• STALE bread with the parma ham (toasting it won't hide its staleness.. hellooo)
• Sad, overly cold beans on salad leaves. Boring, flavourless, BLAH.
• Chickpeas in the beef dish. More beaniness??
• The paella (more beans). I will save the bashing of this dish for a separate paragraph.
• The freezer burn flavoured vanilla ice cream ("original", they called it on the menu)
• The small cockroach roaming around behind me on the wall

Having recently read about Valencia paella as being the "original" style of paella, I was excited to see this on offer as part of our course. The Must Haves of a Valencia paella include:

• Use of chicken and rabbit
• 12 snails, or 2 sprigs of rosemary (apparently snails in the area are usually purged/flavoured with rosemary before they are cooked)
• Arborio-like rice
• Cooked by a man

The offending ice cream

Our paella was indeed cooked by a man, and used chicken. But instead of rabbit, there were what looked like store-bought regular smoked sausage weiners. Not even chorizo! There were what looked like snails, but there was not even a whiff of rosemary. As for the rice, whatever it was, it was much too soggy and didn't have the delicious crusty goodness at the bottom of the paella pan.

Sure, I shouldn't be expecting pure authenticity in Japan, but the sheer fact that the paella was INCREDIBLY SALTY is enough to make me give it Two Thumbs Down(TM). I suspect the chef did not taste the dish before he sent it out. And it wasn't even like they were busy.

Considering our meal cost 3000 yen per person, we were both very unimpressed.

I have had better tasting snails (399 yen!) and fake paella (499 yen!) at the cheap and cheerful family restaurant Saizeriya.

Perhaps their a la carte menu is much more promising. Maybe I will go with the friend who recommended it to me, as I am curious as to what she found so delicious about their food.

Rating (out of 5): 1 (for courteous but not outstanding service)