You eat better at Italian restaurants in Tokyo than you do in Italy. A preposterous statement of unreconstructed chauvinism? An urban myth propagated by a few disgruntled tourists ripped off in Rimini? No, that is the considered opinion of a growing number of people familiar with both countries and their food -- not least among them Mario Frittoli, the Tuscan-born chef who has made his home in Japan for the past 13 years.

Of course, you can dine like a king in most of Italy's major cities. The problem is, royalty is passe. Except at a few outstanding (and nonrepresentative) ristoranti, most of them in cosmopolitan Milan, you will have a hard job finding creative, contemporary food to match what is available to us here in Tokyo. Drop by for a meal at Luxor, Frittoli's unashamedly swish restaurant in ritzy Shirokanedai, and you are likely to agree.

Luxor is not perhaps the most obvious name for an Italian restaurant. But Frittoli has clearly set his sights well above the merely obvious. He has created a thoroughly modern cucina that draws on influences from far beyond the borders of his homeland -- Paris, London and New York, all places he has worked; and, in his regard for freshness and quality of ingredients, from his adopted home, Japan.