Yoyogi, The Grandstand

An old friend had told me about Yoyogi (200 Turf Club Road, #01-12 The Grandstand, tel : +65 6468 8826) a long time back when they were still at Mohammad Sultan. I agreed to check out the place and subsequently only managed that visit a few years later today. This was a lunch of their truffle set.

Which started off with dainty slices of kanpachi with shoyu and truffle. The truffle looked to be of the jarred variety, it's not expensive stuff and was definitely not aromatic like what one would generally expect. The fungus was mostly just a little nutty. Not sure what to make out of this starter. The fish was so thinly sliced that most of the texture was indiscernible and the flavours consisted mainly of just the ponzu. With a little truffle.

The next item that came with the set was chilled truffle capellini with ebiko and crispy sakura ebi. The portion was literally just a few mouthfuls, but this was delicious. The serving plate and fork were also chilled for the serious chilled noodle experience. I sure hope the a la carte portions are much bigger because I can see us coming back for it.

The soup was simply described as a black truffle dobinmushi.

There was some seafood in it. The truffle flavour was much too little to even warrant mention but the soup was quite nice.

The highlight of the truffle set was their ohmi gyu donburi; with the same black truffle that they had used for the rest of the set. We were taught to plunge our spoons into the middle of the egg to scoop out the liquid yolk which would then be drizzled over the bowl of thinly sliced beef and rice. 

It was then that we realised that the preparation of the rice was done with a rather heavy hand with the vinegar. In spite of the fact that ohmi gyu had a high ratio of fat to meat and the bowl was doused with the egg yolk, none of the rice bowl came across as rich. There was enough vinegar to have somehow "balanced" flavours and I'm not sure if that was such a good thing. But then, I'm not complaining. We were just not so impressed.

This black truffle set should have ended with a dessert of yuzu sorbet.

But because we were sitting at the counter where certain prized cuts of tuna were chilled, we gave in to a post dessert dessert.

Note to self : The portions here were lightweight. Needed to get more food afterward.