I have mixed feelings over Kyoten Japanese Cuisine (5 Yong Siak Street, tel : +65 6223 0213). First that comes to mind was that they're pretty expensive for a representative experience. That being said, we picked their Kyoten omakase at $280. Second highest tier in terms of cost and I would assume, what they choose to deliver with us leaving up to them.
To be clear, the food's not bad. For what they charged, we weren't expecting entry level ingredients and they did deliver on that front. Ambience is pretty local, not so much Japanese-y. Or at least it was for the night we ate with raised volumes of conversation from whom appeared to be regulars in Cantonese and Hokkien punctuated by occasional hyena-ish guffaws. We were sharing the counter with a rich old uncle and a Rolex wearing ah beng character that were buying rounds of drinks for the staff.
Anyways, here're the pics. I missed out one of the ishigaki gai nigiri.
No alcohol tonight, just iced matcha.
First of the starters was some citrus-y jellyfish and squid with roe.
Followed by uni tofu with...some shiso flower buds, dashi jelly and a tiny bit of wasabi. I couldn't taste the uni in the tofu.
The otoro appeared fast. Oily and melts mostly in the mouth as one would expect. Again, shiso flower.
There was kanpachi with a blob of house made seaweed puree. That puree was quite nice. Punchy flavour but it kinda overwhelmed the fish.
Pretty impressed by their Kumamoto abalone topped with abalone liver sauce. Both the abalone and sauce were good though the latter reminded me a bit of pureed century egg yolk that's common in pitan tofu. I liked the tender chewiness of the abalone.
This we did not see coming. Shark's fin in seaweed soup. Since it was part of the omakase, we ate it.
Their grilled nodoguro (blackthroat seaperch) was delicious. Tender and flaky. I had embarrassingly thought that the pink squiggle for some sort of sauce (maybe beetroot?) and attempted to prod it with my chopsticks. The chef noticed and added that I'm not the first to have mistaken the plate design for something edible.
This was tachiuo (silver belt fish). Another white fish with flaky tender meat which happens to look like a silver belt. Hence the name...ahem. This was the item I liked least because it was fried like a katsu with in my opinion, bad ratio of fish to crust. What's worse, it was drizzled with tonkatsu sauce which overwhelmed the fish.
A5 wagyu. Portions were small. But delicious.
Tsukemono was served at this point as a palate cleanser. This was a citrus-y daikon with a bit of yuzu zest. The chef mentioned that we need not finish them. But I liked it so much that I cleared my plate fast. It must not have gone unnoticed and they gave me another portion.
The sushi starts at this point. They're all a little petite if you asked me. The first was a nicely done akami with shari that was a little lukewarm. This has got to be one of the better akami nigiri I've had.
Next was botan ebi. So so.
The smoky kamasu (barracuda) was tender and delicious.
Tai with kinome (pepper leaf). As I've discovered kinome are harvested young leaves from sansho.
This was a briefly torched kinmedai. I've previously voiced my opinion on preferring them cooked to raw in sushi. I guess this might constitute semi-grilled because it wasn't entirely raw. This was good.
Nodoguro - liked this.
I was told that the uni handroll is their pièce de résistance. T'was a yummy uni surge. Never had so much in a portion before.
The sweet tamago castella marks the end of the sushis. Cake egg cake. I've been confused about what these things are called. There's the term atsuyaki tamago which I've come across and I'm not sure if that's the name for them. I've also been told that they can be simply referred to as tamago.
There's fish in their miso soup and that flavour from the fish came through. I liked this.
Dessert was musk melon and peach. Both were sweet and juicy but the peach wasn't as fragrant as those Yamanishi ones I've previously gotten.
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