This quaint pasta café serves up retro charm and soulful plates of spaghetti in a small, light-filled dining room decorated in varying shades of green. The café dates back more than 30 years and so does its playlist of 1970s and 80s Japanese pop ballads.
4Season specialises in wafu, a Japanese take on Western pasta dishes. The menu has wafu classics like napolitan (ketchup spaghetti), plus the restaurant’s original creations like the soup pasta (¥1,200), which is served in a seafood broth replete with clams, squid and prawns.
The ooba spaghetti (¥920) is quite special, too; hidden underneath a blanket of shredded ooba leaf (a relative of shiso) is a generous serving of pasta cooked with onion, green pepper, shiitake, sausage and strips of nori. The tarako (salted cod roe) and cream pasta (¥1,100), on the other hand, is well-liked for its umami-rich, parmesan-like flavour, thanks to the cod roe.
4Season is perched on the second storey overlooking a busy shopping street – just look out for a Key Coffee sign and head up the adjacent stairs.