Rakuzen

C says:

A combination of A being saddled with reservist and a number of family obligations meant that we didn’t have much opportunity to eat out over the long weekend. A felt like Japanese, so we decided to try Rakuzen at Millenia Walk.

Our experience was probably marred somewhat by the fact that we were unfortunately seated next to a table containing (1) an annoying kid who insisted on playing his smartphone games at full volume, and (2) his grandmother who sounded like she had a cold and kept snorting throughout dinner.

We started with a salmon sashimi sampler containing 3 kinds of salmon – regular sashimi, salmon belly, and salmon roe. This was pretty good, with the salmon belly coming out tops – it was rich, creamy and definitely very fresh.

We shared a plate of 3 varieties of belly sushi, with salmon, tuna and swordfish, since this conveniently came with 2 pieces each. But it was every man for himself with the aburi sushi – we each had our own platter, which comprised salmon belly, tuna belly, scallop, squid, mackerel and swordfish. I like how they scored the fish, so that there was more surface area to aburi. They do their nigiri sushi pretty well – good rice-to-fish ratio, the rice was well cooked and the fish was very fresh. No surprises that the aburi salmon belly and tuna belly were the most outstanding of the lot.

The tuna and avocado tartare sounded very promising – I expected something akin to Spruce’s tuna tartare with avocado. Alas, this was extremely disappointing. The tuna was barely seasoned, the avocado wasn’t much better, and the sauce that was meant to flavor everything was almost like an Asian thick sweet sauce (like the popiah kind) and totally didn’t go with the tuna.

We also ordered a couple of their creative makis – one with salmon and the other with fried oyster. These were, as expected, quite average and a tad gimmicky, but I suppose they make fairly reasonable fillers compared to the pricier (but certainly much better) nigiri sushi.

Our bill was around $160, which I thought was a bit steep given the rather inconsistent standard. If we do come back in future, we may pass on everything else and just order various nigiri sushi platters, since that seems to be what they’re good at.

A says:

Good. A decent option if you’re in the area, but not really a destination joint.

Rakuzen

9 Raffles Boulevard

#01-14/19 Millenia Walk

Tel: 6333-1171

Open daily: 11.30 am to 3 pm; 6 pm to 10.30 pm

www.rakuzen.com.sg