Eating Japan Part 12 – Spaghetti Vongole

Cafe Bientot in Okayama is a cosmopolitan place.  It has a French name, with an English-language menu, sells German beers and Italian food.  They have a set lunch of soup, salad and a small calzone pizza for 600 yen (£3.65) but when I eat Italian in Japan I always go for the spaghetti vongole.  In Japan, you can eat Italian, French or Chinese, just as in any other country, with one crucial difference – in Japan, the food is very rarely prepared by a native of the respective country – the chef will almost always be Japanese. ​

And because the Japanese are perfectionists in everything they do, the food will always be as good, or better than the original.  At the Cafe Bientot they had a wood-burning oven for the pizzas, as authentic as anything in Italy, producing pizzas as good as those in Naples.  I ordered the spaghetti vongole with complete confidence.  The clams are always fresh; the sauce, made with garlic and white wine, always exactly as it should be. This dish was expensive by Japanese standards at 1,200 yen (£7.25) but it was just as good as any I’ve had in Sicily, which is my second favourite place to eat.