Last year’s World Gourmet Summit featured some notable personalities including a special appearance by Ferran Adrià and one very particular chef from Japan who transported everything including water for his guest stint in Singapore. The latter might sound a bit absurd, but if you’ve ever had the pleasure of dining in Japan, you might appreciate how difficult it is to reproduce those tastes and textures abroad. This year, Shinichiro Takagi, chef/owner of Zeniya had the dubious honor of presenting the cuisine and ingredients of his region during this tumultuous time in Japan.
Chef Takagi hails from Kanazawa, capital of the Ishikawa Prefecture, which, if my memory serves me correctly, is home to great seafood, historical attractions, and celebrities Hideki Matsui and “Chairman Kaga”. While this region on the western part of the main island was unaffected by the recent disasters, imports of food items from Japan has become much more strict, and as a consequence many ingredients meant for Takagi’s menu were unable to be shipped. This meant that many substitutions were used for this meal that ultimately diluted the experience of each dish.
Our first course was a mizuno salad with poached prawns and mirugai (clam) in a ginger vinegar sauce. The prawn and the miragai were bland and a bit chewy, leaving just the crunchiness of the salad and tartness of the sauce as the highlight of this so-so starter. The second course of soup with a very light and fluffy hamaguri (clam) fishball was intriguing but ultimately lacked the subtle depth that G and I love about well composed Japanese dishes.
Third course was sashimi of prawn and flounder followed by otoro. The flounder was a bit chewy and the prawn was firm and mildly sweet. The otoro had a nice melt-in-your mouth quality with just a hint of tuna flavors.
The highlight of the meal was the intermezzo of deep-fried sesame tofu. This was very well done, and as we would learn later from the chef, the sesame was one of the few ingredients specifically brought over from his restaurant. This dish also made us reminisce about Sasanoyuki.
Next came the aptly titled Chef Plate, a tour de force of the chef’s ingenuity and skills. The dish was indeed impressive with a dazzling array of tiny bites all presented on one plate. There was quite a bit of “egg” from both poultry and fish. Since I’m not a fan of roe or milt, my only comment is that the river fish milt was surprisingly good. The half boiled egg was perfectly cooked, and the sweet tamago slice was also a pleasure. However, the prawn and duck breast slice were both inexplicably dry and borderline tough.
By this point, neither G nor I were particularly impressed with the flavors, but we did appreciate the clear skill shown in the presentation and overall composition. The grilled and stewed dishes featuring the nodoguro fish that followed were slightly better, though I didn’t quite feel the ah-ha appreciation of why this fish is considered a favorite of that particular prefecture. I did however enjoy the heavy sprinkling of kinome (baby sansho leaves), a seasonal delicacy. The adult leaves are ground and made into a spice that is great for unagi.
It was around this time that Chef Takagi made his rounds. We spent some time chatting with him about his cooking, the situation in Japan, and our mutual like of hatta hatta fish. The discussion was sincere, and I honestly felt bad for him for having to shoehorn “local” ingredients with the precious few items that he was able to bring over. Takagi had even tactfully mentioned that a number of dishes had to be rethought given the current circumstances.
A rice bowl, err box followed by mikan jelly marked the end of our meal.
While I can appreciate that the chef was effectively cooking with one hand tied behind his back, I wonder about the wisdom of proceeding with a pale imitation of the originally envisioned meal, especially at $250++ per person. A Feed at Raffles discount made the bill less painful, but since we were celebrating some good news for G, this wasn’t quite the celebratory meal that I had envisioned. I may have been a bit critical of our meal, but the whole experience really felt like we were admiring classic art copied with crayons. If G and I someday visit Kanazawa, we’ll try Chef Takagi’s cooking on his home turf for a fairer evaluation.
