Ristorante Luka, Tanjong Pagar Road

In our shores, there are only a few Japanese chefs here that do Italian food. Presumably at some point, names get recycled. Luka (18 Tanjong Pagar Road, tel : +65 6221 3988) is by Takashi Okuno - formerly from L'Operetta and Truffle Gourmet.

There're a few claims to Luka and one of them is their house made wagyu bresaola. A bresaola that didn't look like anything that's air dried, salted or aged to my untrained eyes. In fact, there's quite a bit of moisture on the sliced beef and if I hadn't ordered it, I would have thought it was carpaccio. 

Not so much fat in the meat so not much flavour as well - not to mention that there was mound of ricotta secretly hiding under the beef waiting to mess up your palate when you're trying to taste the "wagyu" in that "bresaola". Didn't work for us at all. 

This was smoked egg, wagyu and uni. A dish that should win by virtue of ingredients, assuming that the said ingredients are of good quality. It was tasty. The smoked flavour in the egg was dominant followed by some floral creaminess from the sea urchin. Not sure where that torched wagyu came in though.

We liked the fresh tasting sesame crusted pretzel that came with their whipped bottarga cream. A bottarga cream that hit more like smoked hummus rather than bottarga with cream.

That's fried wakasagi. A small fish like smelt. Those white stuff they drizzled over tasted like some sort of lime aioli. Very lime-y and well done - also something that was bordering on overwhelming the flavours from those little fried fish

There's trippa. Probably alla Luka. Spiced tomato base, cannellini beans and perhaps mirepoix together with honeycomb tripe. The texture of the tender tripe was good but it didn't have much flavour. Couldn't really taste the cheese but we were getting bits of fried garlic. While this was definitely still a hearty rendition, the one at Pietrasanta kicked more ass.

I had to compare their risotto Parmigiano. With the one that was leagues ahead at Enoteca L'Operetta done a la minute with aged Parmigiano Reggiano that blew this out of the water easily.  This flavour of this plate was flat and a little sad. The drizzles of the sweet balsamic vinegar could have saved it but there was too little to go around. I should have known better. 

Luka has an aglio e olio with uni cooked using bavette. There was sea urchin that were cooked with the noodles and a few small slivers laid over the finished plate. In an attempt to describe this - there're definitely flavour from the sea urchin but it's not the oceanic briny kind from the raw uni. It's earthier if that made sense. We were getting aroma from garlic as well as some umami from the shaven bottarga. Unexpectedly addictive.