It's always depressing when news comes in that another good restaurant has bitten the dust. In the past month we've found out that two of the best (in their own ways) have given up the ghost. So it was with not a little trepidation that we hiked off into nether Ebisu to see if our long-time favorite backstreet Italian place was still there.

Bar Pomato looks absolutely as unpreposessing as its highly unlikely (and quite misleading) name. In fact it is not a bar at all; it's a gem of a little restaurant that over the past decade and more has produced some of the most satisfying Italian home cooking anywhere in the city.

From the outside it does little to draw your attention. In daylight hours you could walk past and not give it a second glance. The paintwork is a bit shabby; there's an abandoned-looking barbecue outside; the pot plants along the front look scruffy, especially in winter when there's little vegetation to hide the mounds of gleaming white eggshells.