Vidriog Spanish Restaurant (2007-05-29)
We like Spanish cuisine. Incidentally Barcelona is the first European city we visited and I still remember the food we ate there. We went out to search for lunch one weekend and stumbled upon Vidriog Spanish restaurant, naturally we had to give it a go.
Besides the Vidriog in Kichijoji (
) where we were, there are also two
in Shibuya (
) and Ginza (
) respectively. We arrived around midday and
were shown a table immediately. Bottled water from Spain was
poured into stem glasses as soon as we were seated by a courteous
server. Maroon linen draped over white table cloth conducts an
elegant feel in this small and cozy eatery on the second floor of a
four-story building. There were six lunch courses on the menu and
we opted for the 2200 Yen/US$18 per person "B" course which consisted
of Tapas, Mushrooms, Sauteed salmon,Paella, Bread (personally I
wouldn't count bread as one course, but this is Japan and they would),
Dessert, Coffee/tea. Before I tell you how each course fared, I
might as well sum up our food here in two words: Oily. Salty.
None of the dishes were deep fried, but the chef used so much olive
oil in the preparation that it felt greasy, thus becoming heavy.
I like extra virgin olive oil and I only cook with this oil, but too
much is too much. Most of the food was also way over-seasoned and
numbed our taste buds' ability to detect any awesomeness in the
food. What a shame.
The Tapas plate held a very limited portion (not unexpected) of
three different kinds of appetizers. The salad with exactly two
small shrimps, two small scallops and two minuscule squid rings was
bland and almost dressing-less. Noah wouldn't like its taste but
he would have so approved of the seafood pairs. The baguette
slices were topped with chopped tomatoes SATURATED with oil. A
dollop of potato salad
smothered in Kewpie mayo and olive oil finished off the trio.
Tater salad? What's going on?! V's way of Japanizing a
foreign cuisine is out of control.
Sizzling button mushrooms in a typical tapas style earthen ware came
dancing in a pool of olive oil with sauteed garlic. They were
very salty but delicious, we devoured most of the oil with the
bread. If the mushrooms weren't so salty to begin with, it
would've been the star of the meal. Now we're left with a
starless lunch. The sauteed salmon with chopped caper sauce was
tasty but TINY. I don't know if my stomach even realized it had
gotten this morsel during our lunch.
I wasn't overwhelmed by the Paella. It's not the most abundant
seafood-a-flowing dish I've eaten, but it did contain the usual
suspects such as saffron, clams, green beans and a healthy dose of
chopped cod. Sadly it was also very oily AND over-seasoned.
For dessert, apple tart and vanilla ice cream with rum raisin, though
not my favorite flavor, was a welcomed change to all the salty food we
just consumed.
Vidriog Kichijoji Honchou 2-13-7 Grandil Kichijoji Building 2F Tel: 0422-22-7251
Lunch courses start from 1200Yen P/P to 2600Yen P/P
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