I did not believe it possible for alimentation to bring a man to tears. Big Kokka proved me wrong. Whilst savouring the butterfish marinated in miso with pickled Nikkei, I shed a tear. I was not aware, in my meagre experience, that anything so seemingly banal could move me. The fact that this dish was cooked over coals makes it even more extraordinary. Now as I have mentioned before, I don’t like fish – but this was a unique experience.
Though it was love at first bite and I have yet to cease thinking about the butterfish, I must tell you about the other dishes we sampled. We devoured everything with such frightening speed that only the desserts were left standing to be photographed. In essence, you’ll have to take my word for it.
I ate the chauffa black rice with duck – another revelatory dish. Beautifully cooked, succulent and married wonderfully with the duck. Perhaps uncharacteristically of this restaurant, this portion was large.
Finally we shared the Iberian pork rib braised at low temperature with sweet potato and Criolla. Once again, perfect. Crispy mouth watering ribs with the softest sweet potatoes. A comparatively simple dish, executed wonderfully.
By dessert we had slowed down enough to take photographs.
The Muscova cake with passion fruit cream umeshu gelatin was really well put together. The flavours blended into one another majestically but what really struck me was the infusion of umeshu sake in the jelly. Umeshu is a unique apricot liqueur, though the Prunus Mume tree, from which Ume (the fruit) originates is related to both prunes and apricots. The crux of my diatribe is that the jelly was infused with fruit liqueur, and that is was outstanding.
The chocolate mochi, too, was great. I seem to be running out of emotive adjectives. Having been to Japan and tasted phenomenal mochi in Numatsu (Fuji) and Okayama, I was not prepared for how accurate the flavour of this mochi would be. Authentic mochi are prepared with rice flour and beaten to within an inch of their life with big hammers. Look it up on YouTube, I’m not joking. This one was perfectly sweet and the chocolate filling was not too dense, which I was mortified about, as you can imagine.
And to top it all off, it is available to book on The Fork (for now) so you will even get a discount!
In all, eating here makes you forget about all life’s worries. There are no trials and tribulations: just you; the girl you love and spectacular food.