Basta Pasta

One a chilly night a (super extremely long) while back, I met Jen and a friend of hers for dinner at Basta Pasta--where they serve Italian food with a Japanese flair. The original restaurant opened in 1985 in Tokyo, Japan, inspired by the wildly-popular "Iron Chef" competition.

I knew none of this backstory until after the meal, so it seemed a little unusual at first. Everyone spoke Japanese in the kitchen while they cooked pasta! Gotta love fusion.

Má Pêche

It took us long enough, but That Sara & I finally met up for our joint birthday dinner (our birthdays are two days apart). We hemmed and hawed (we! the food bloggers!) over where to go, and Sara finally came in at the last moment to suggest Má Pêche ("My Peach" in French--momofuku also means lucky peach in Japanese, one of the David Chang outposts I'd yet to try. (Sara's take on things is at the end of this post!)