Not too far from the Hiro-o station, the place that calls itself the Sora Library Café and Dining offers many coffee table books and magazines to read, but none of them can leave the premises. Be that as it may, this dog-friendly place serves eclectic food: Japanese curry, Italian pasta, and Mediterranean salad to name a few. It has a yummy shiso pizza; all the pizzas here have very thin crust, but the simple combination of that ultra thin crust, great tomato sauce and shiso leaves provides a new taste to the palate. In the mood for salad? There is the chicken salad with roasted pine nuts and soy-sesame dressing. Weekend set menu includes soup, salad, main entrée, drink and dessert (or wine), all for the price of ¥1000. Like in many places, the non-alcoholic drinks here are less expensive during the daytime.
The staff will immediately serve water for your pooch upon entering. A menu for Fido and Fifi are also available for the price of ¥500. There is no separate area for non-smokers. Weekday lunchtime is usually crowd, with patrons coming from the nearby Sacred Heart Catholic School. Between 3-6, there is a cake set menu.
[UPDATED REVIEW: April 17, 2005]
Since the departure of the former manager Satoru and the delightful wait staff Asako, the service and accomodation have been rather lacking. Before the soup and salad were even consumed, the main entrée was already taken out, resulting in the main dish being not too hot by the time one tended to it; the dessert was given while we were still in the middle of finishing the entree. In traditional Japanese meal, these elements can indeed be sent out at the same time, but that was a totally different context. This also never happened in our experience with Sora before. As there is no manager hired at this point (only a sub-manager available), maybe the recently hired staff were not told about the proper way to serve.
Food quality was good, although food presentation was definitely lacking: the ingredients of a salad was thrown in together without any care. It was then that we realized what an artist Satoru-san had been, for he was also responsible for the cooking in addition to managing the place.]
[UPDATED NEWS: December 29, 2005]
Sora has closed and been replaced by "B Café." I have not yet tried the place, so no review yet on that one.
Sora
5-1-18 Hiro-o
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0012
Tel: +81 (03) 5423-7511
Fax: +81 (03) 5423-7512
Mon-Fri: 7:30-10:00, 11:00-24:00
Sat-Sun: 11:00-24:00
