Tatsuya

C says:

After our experience at Brooklyn Fare, we wondered whether, if we were willing to shell out the same amount of money, we would get as good or similar experience at a top Japanese restaurant, like Tatsuya? We decided to treat ourselves on a special occasion, and went for the omakase at Tatsuya for my birthday.

We started with a selection of cold items - the ones that stood out were a cube of smoked goose, and incredibly tender cooked abalone.

Then the whole uni topped with caviar arrived. This was truly decadence in every mouthful. As if the uni wasn't already flavourful enough, the dollops of caviar made it even more luxurious and intense.

The sashimi course was next. We had a few slices of kanpachi topped with some flavoured oil and chives, a few pieces of ark shell, flounder, prawn and a chunk of toro. The kanpachi was really good; the rest were a bit lacklustre.

The next dish was a braised one - eggplant and balls of yam with a couple of pieces of eel. I daresay, best eel I've ever had; perfectly cooked and completely boneless.

Next up was a grilled belt fish, in a butter sauce. This was quite subtle and needed the squeeze of lemon, but the fatty fish completely melted in your mouth. Simply delicious.

They must have had a shipment of uni recently, because the next course was an uni chawanmushi. As with the previous uni course, this was proof that eggs of all kinds are the best foods, and even better when paired together.

The highlight of the meal was the sushi course. 5 pieces of expertly constructed aburi sushi. The 2 killer standouts were a scallop and foie gras one, and a prawn with mentaiko. The flavours of those are still haunting us now. Insanely good.

We cleansed our palate with a tuna belly soup. However, before dessert, the sushi chef noticed that we still looked a bit hungry (trust me, portions were quite small), and asked if he could make us another couple of bites of sushi. No pics of these because they were meant to be handheld and eaten at one go - a nigiri sushi topped with negitoro and uni (again), and a temaki with mentaiko and chopped salmon skin.

Finally satiated, we ended with fruit and, as a bonus request, ice cream. The fruit was apricots and insanely honey-sweet musk melon, and the ice cream that we couldn't refuse was a vanilla caramel one from Hokkaido.

The damage was pretty bad, but this was an excellent meal. Definitely too steep to come here except for a special occasion, or if we've been particularly austere for a while. Maybe next time, instead of a full omakase including the cooked items, we may go with just the sashimi and sushi, since those are what they're apparently so good at.

A says:

Amazingly good meal for an amazingly high price. Probably the best prawn sushi I've ever had though. Same with the scallop and foie gras one. I would definitely recommend this place if you have bucketloads of money to spend on food.

Tatsuya
22 Scotts Road
Goodwood Park Hotel
Tel: 6887-4598
Open daily: 12 noon - 3pm; 6.30 pm - 11 pm