If there’s one restaurant in Osaka I’ve most wanted to visit these past two years, it’s TOM Curiosa (トムクリオーザ) — a 🥈 Silver Award winner for two years running now.

Reservations two months out are no problem at all, and the team and chef — not strong in English — are genuinely warm toward foreign guests. The cooking is rooted in Italian technique, folded seamlessly into Japanese ingredients; the ham refills are unlimited, and the pastas keep getting better one after another. This kind of comfort is exactly what makes a restaurant you grow fonder of with every bite.

TOM comes from chef Tsutomu Asai’s own name; Curiosa means “curiosity” in Italian. Chef Asai started out at Osaka’s celebrated Ponte Vecchio, later became head chef at Sud Ponte Vecchio, and also oversaw the kitchens at Eki Ponte Vecchio and Dolce Ponte Vecchio.

He opened his own restaurant in 2013, and moved to its current Kita-shinchi location in 2023.

Just a ten-some-minute walk from Umeda Station, and a Silver-level restaurant this good sitting that close really is a kind of happiness.

Sugar-free panna cotta made with buffalo milk from KURKKU FIELDS, silky and milky on entry. A thick layer of Parmesan on top delivers plenty of savoriness, and rolled up with a bit of fig, a juicy sweetness and sense of season appear immediately.

Halfway through, the sommelier passed by and slid two bottles of olive oil from the corner in front of me — “You should try it with the olive oil — the gentle Biancolilla works well.”

A familiar opening combination, but pure, uncomplicated joy.

The plating was relatively plain and understated — genuinely hard to predict, looking at it on the table, just how much of a surprise it would deliver once eaten.

The shiba shrimp on its own carried a smoky, salty note, the flesh still crystal-crisp — beautifully handled. The tartare mixed okra with a bit of crisp fish, the okra’s sticky texture spreading the freshness across the dish — a genuinely distinctive experience.

And the deliciousness went well beyond that. The red sauce in the middle was lighter than it looked, with a bright bell pepper aroma and a lovely acidity that kept the whole dish lively. Add a touch of chili oil as the restaurant suggests, and it gives a little edge against the sweetness and freshness that follow. A handful of elements that, like fried rice, never go wrong together — mix and match them yourself and it’s delicious however you combine them.

A pale yellow, bristling fuzzy ball, its top blanketed in caviar — a plating that felt almost too plain and literal.

A moment of surprise when the fork lifted it up: it turned out to be extremely finely julienned potato.

Fine as it was, it still kept a bit of crunch when chewed. The milky-white sauce had a slight viscosity, just enough to hang the caviar onto the thin potato strands. Milkiness, savoriness, and the potato’s own aroma layered one after another.

How does something feel this simple and this extravagant at once!

A jet-black ravioli, built around a seasonal ingredient that was impossible to avoid: eggplant.

The ravioli’s skin was cooked al dente, the eggplant filling inside soft and warm. What I didn’t expect was a layer of pesto underneath — fresh and clean in aroma, with the weight of peanut running through it.

Just a trace of eggplant aroma didn’t bloom until the very end — texture and flavor seemed to arrive on a slight delay from each other.

Finally, the legendary “endless ham” portion of the meal arrived.

24-month-aged ham from Masatoyo Tada of Gifu, mozzarella, arugula, rice balls, fried dough.

Ham is the star, and how you eat it is entirely up to your mood. But what’s great is that every supporting player holds its own without ever stealing the show.

Ham wrapped around rice — savory saltiness and the rice’s own aroma coming together, a bit like a concentrated bite of salted-pork rice. Paired with arugula and mozzarella, a fresh milkiness is added. The fried dough was made especially light — bite in, and it’s crisp and airy at once…

Every single bite genuinely delivers a different combination. If there were nothing else on the menu, I could happily spend the whole evening just playing around with these supporting dishes.

A plating aesthetic with a sense of era to it, yet the eating is pure, solid joy~!

Extremely thin noodles coated in a mildly spicy, tomato-sour bell pepper sauce, still faintly springy on entry. Hairy crab gave the dish body and freshness, and the sauce’s saltiness and thickness were both pitched exactly right. A touch of cilantro in the middle was a genuinely inspired addition.

After all that ham, a cold pasta this joyful on the street is exactly the breather you need.

Worth praising the wine pairing here too. Thought and care went into every pairing across the whole menu — matching the cold noodles with mead was a genuinely unexpected choice, linking together two foods that would otherwise seem to have nothing to do with each other.

After a run of consecutive surprises, the charcoal-grilled beef and lamb, cooked to exactly the right doneness, were delicious — but by this point in the set menu, they felt, honestly, a little plain 😈.

What I didn’t expect was that after the mains, there was still one more pasta, with a choice of portion size.

“You have to pick the large one!!” — I overheard a man at a nearby table urging his wife.

Every table around me firmly chose the large portion. How good does something have to be for everyone to keep eating past the point of bursting….!

A wide pappardelle with porcini and fragrant matsutake-style mushrooms — lift a chopstick-full, and the aroma hits you immediately. The width of the noodle was exactly right for spreading that aroma across the entire mouth. It has a certain kinship with the fragrant satisfaction of oil-splashed noodles.

Dessert closed with a big autumn 🍐 pear sorbet, alongside a deconstructed take on Italy’s national dessert, tiramisu.

One, refreshing and aromatic; the other, layered and classic, breaking bitterness, sweetness, and fragrance apart into different temperatures and textures — each moment clearly memorable.

TOM Curiosa really was a meal I genuinely loved — there’s almost an urge to make it a mandatory stop every single time I come to Osaka from now on.

Traditional, yet never short on small creative touches, balancing seasonality with cleverness — familiar Asian ingredients in season like okra, eggplant, porcini, and fig, repurposed into Italian cooking, colliding into flavors more satisfying than expected.

And then there’s the unlimited ham refills, a wine pairing priced at nearly 1:1 with the food that adds real value to the meal, and a service team that shares its joy endlessly even with solo diners…

I will be back, again and again!!!

TOM Curiosa

Tuesday–Saturday

18:00–20:20 / 20:45–

Omakase Course ¥27,500