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For starters, it can be a dazzlingly multicolored plate of beef carpaccio: slices of beef interwoven with herbs and vegetables, the subtle flavors of the roast sitting against a tangy balsamic teriyaki, hints of crispy Parmesan scattered throughout and a finish of truffle oil that cushions each bite with a pleasant aftertaste.
As the opener to AWkitchen’s summer menu, it signals what the rest of the dining experience will be: beef-forward and Italian at its core.
The Meat Lovers Pizza that follows cements this: a fresh golden crust loaded with mixed paprika, grilled chicken, beef salami, beef bacon, capers, olives and mozzarella on a bed of fresh tomato sauce. It sounds like a lot, but it’s not overwhelming. Everything finds its place.
By this point, a picture starts to form. This is a kitchen that knows exactly what it’s doing, and has probably known for a while. That instinct belongs to Toru Yomoda, the chef behind AWkitchen, whose route to Italian cooking began in the most unlikely place: a television set in Japan in 2000, where a young Yomoda watched a man cook spaghetti and decided it was about the coolest thing he’d ever seen.
At 18, he enrolled in cooking school and took a part time job at a wood-fired, Napoli-style pizzeria, where he spent two years learning to cook over a live flame. Then at 20 he decided, unusually, to spend two years as a waiter at a classic Italian restaurant in Tokyo, convinced that watching how guests are looked after, and how a dining room actually runs, was as much a part of the craft as anything that happens on the line. It is a sensibility that shows in his food.
Back at the table, the Beef Cotoletta Alla Milanese arrives and makes an impression. A formidable slab of black Angus sirloin, coated with panko and Parmesan and fried to a confident golden brown, served alongside a heap of salad and tomato sauce. Slicing into it is a crunchy experience, the sauce balancing the brightness of tomato against the mellower saltiness of the beef. It’s familiar, yet done better than it needs to be.
At this point, it should be enough of a culinary experience, but it wouldn't be a complete AWkitchen experience without some house-made pasta.
The Paccheri Beef Ragout is where Yomoda’s patience shows on the plate. The paccheri is smothered in an aromatic beef ragout that's been slow-cooked to perfection in a red wine reduction, decorated with a generous amount of grated Parmesan and sliced mushroom. The braised beef carries a rich flavor that effortlessly clings on to each inch of the al dente pasta, making each bite velvety and creamy with a hint of sweetness that's hearty but not heavy.
The Osso Buco with Saffron Risotto is the final main, and the most memorable. Similar to the paccheri dish, it serves a slow-cooked, cross-cut shank of veal, prepared in a stew of mirepoix mixed with beef stock and a slight hint of chili. Because of its lengthy preparation time, the huge display of beef oozes aroma as it melts in your mouth. Somehow, we were reminded of sop buntut, though subtler and less aromatic.
“With a steak, you just grill it, and anyone can do that at home,” Yomoda says.
“A stew you marinate and slow-cook for a day or two with the spice, the alcohol, the homemade beef stock, that’s my secret, and I make it with a lot of love.”
The risotto alongside it has a firmer bite that works in its favor, its flavor developing the longer you chew, moving through cheesy and creamy notes into something faintly herbal. Together, the beef and the risotto give you everything at once. Of course, you could eat either on its own and leave happy and well-fed, but combined, they become something else entirely.
(Courtesy of AWkitchen)
To finish, the Classic Tiramisu was the most colorful and eventful plate of the meal. We were greeted by a small spread of components, a bright splatter of fruit jam, a scattering of cracker dust, cuts of fresh fruit and a long strip of dark chocolate standing out of a thin, sail-shaped waffle cookie, almost like a boat mid-voyage.
The first bite opens light and creamy, a velvety layer of mascarpone on a moist bed of finger cookie, before it deepens into a bold, roasted coffee with subtle hints of cocoa and espresso. A rum-and-Amaretto warmth surfaces at the tail of each bite, while the jam offsets the richness with a tart sweetness. The fruit and chocolate add to it, but the tiramisu itself stays the focus. It’s a distinct, personal spin rather than a conventional one.
When you take a step back from the individual plates, you see that the menu starts to look deliberately built. Everything is reasonably priced for what it is, and Chef Yomoda has clearly left room for the diner who finds a beef-forward Italian menu intimidating.
The pizza and the cotoletta are the safe choices, dishes anyone recognizes and knows they’ll like, but neither is left basic. Both are elevated just enough that ordering something familiar still gives you more than the familiar experience.
At the other end, the two most expensive items, the paccheri and the osso buco with risotto, were also the two best things we ate, which is not always how these menus work. Here, the price tracks the plate: You pay more for the pasta and the risotto, and you get more.
“Every time someone comes to AWkitchen, I want there to be a new dish they have to try so no one gets bored, and they’re always looking forward to what comes next,” Yomoda says.
None of it reinvents Italian food, but it takes dishes you already know and does them better than they need to be done. For a summer menu built almost entirely on beef, that turns out to be enough. The osso buco alone is worth the trip.
This feature was produced in collaboration with AWkitchen.
