ELIO

* Cuisine: Italian
* Where: Kojimachi
* Tel: 03 3239 6771
* Website: click pic
* Menu: I/E/J
* Cost: around 11,000 per head
* Ohishi:
* Rating: ----


Always delicious and always crowed locanada recommended by local Italians. This is another restaurant where diners are rather pushed up together and but the food never fails to please. Set menus can be a bit uninspiring but come with a smaller group, stay a la carte, enjoy a selection from the reasonably priced wine list and be prepared to shout above the clamour of your many fellow diners all night and a grand evening is guaranteed.

da IVO

* Cuisine: Italian
* Where: Hiroo
* Tel: 03 5793 3121
* Website:
* Menu: I/J
* Cost: around 7,000 per head
* Ohishi: pizza
* Rating: ----

An Italian chef from Naples means it's pizza that's the attraction here. Food is great and menu interesting. With it's open-fronted facade, da Ivo make a great summer evening venue. Waiters are friendly and helpful but the fact that they're all dressed in traditional Naples clown costumes replete with face-mask perched on top of their heads makes the ambience more fake-Vegas/Disney than real Italian.

Il LUPONE

* Cuisine: Italian
* Where: Naka Meguro
* Tel: 03 5722 6789
* Website: click the pic
* Menu: Italian
* Cost: around 6,000 per head (inc beer)
* Ohishi: Calzone, Capricciosa
* Rating: ----

Great pizza places abound in Tokyo so to be exceptional takes something special. Il Lupone's homely ambience, efficient service and authentic fare is that something so it's no great surpise to find that depsite the not-so-convenient location, it's a three month wait for a reservation. The menu is varied but compact and ordering is a pleasure. There's antipasti, pastas and meat dishes on offer but the wood-burning brick oven and the "vera pizza" certification mean that pizza is the star here. They're a decent size (unless you ask for a same topping but less base version - same price) and excellently prepared. We had three.

* Alternatives: Pizza Savoy (Naka-Meguro), Il Pizzaiolo (Sangenjaya)