I’ve never particularly warmed up to sushi — cooked vinegared rice with raw fish hauled from Japan’s cold waters. The one other time I tried it on a river cruise along the Chao Phraya, I spent the evening on the deck feeling biliously sick, unmindful of the grand, illuminated sights of Bangkok. The cause was a toss-up between swaying on those roiling waters and the uncooked fish and I was convinced it was the latter.
So, when the occasion to dine at Hyatt Regency’s Japanese restaurant, Yakiniku, came, I took my time to actually turn up at its beautifully-designed, mural-engraved interiors. Started last year as a pop-up that metamorphosed into a restaurant, Yakiniku is headed by Chef Shohei Nakajima, an attempt by the hotel to have expat chefs head restaurants that feature cuisine from their home countries. The young chef mastered the art of sushi from his father at a family-run outlet in Saitama, and later worked with the Grand Hyatt, Mumbai. On the evening we visit, Chef Nakajima is elsewhere, and it is Sous Chef Sundaram who is behind the open grill station (yakiniku is a Japanese style of cooking bite-sized meat over grid irons). We are seated by the courteous Jawahar, who is attentive all evening without being intrusive, and is a fount of knowledge on the steady stream of dishes that makes its way to the table.
Among the many things that make Japanese food unique — the right ingredients, precise cooking methods — it is their expertise in raw seafood that perhaps announces its place in the cuisines of the world. The mastery of sushi is akin to the grasp of an art through singular dedication that lies at the heart of Japanese culture. This is what, to a large extent, makes food at Yakiniku exciting — the knowledge that your dish has been crafted by a technique honed over centuries.
We begin with the nasu dengaku (fried eggplant, miso sauce, sesame seed) that has a sweet nutty flavour. The shabu-shabu salad (sliced pork, mixed green salad, sesame seed dressing) tastes unusual to the palate, but has the worth of a warm blanket you want to hold on to. I allow myself a second serving. The chicken katsu is familiar and tasty, but seems like a sudden detour to a well-known chain that specialises in crumb-fried chicken. The miso soup, a salty broth with scallions, is a little hard to finish, so the sushi platters that follow are received with much enthusiasm.
With the prawn tempura maki (batter-fried shrimp head buried deep in the vinegared rice, tail punching the air) and the salmon maki (with cottage cheese), Yakiniku outdoes itself. Pickled ginger sits still by the side of the platter, while harvest moons of translucent seafood give off unique flavours.
The yakiniku platter — salmon, tuna and prawn — grilled with the perfection of a samurai swinging his sword, yields easily, layer after layer falling away at a touch of the fork. The yaki soba, fried yellow noodles with chicken, are rippled waves of crunch, but the crowning glory of the meal has long passed. Dessert is coffee jelly, coconut ice cream on clouds of fluffy cream with a bitter coffee base — the caffeine kicks in at the speed of a jet plane. But the languor of the wholesome dinner from the far side of Asia, lingers.
