Mikuni

C says:

Another place that we definitely wouldn't visit without the FAR Card discount, Mikuni took over what used to be Inagiku at Fairmont Hotel. Mikuni has some fairly elaborate set lunches, featuring their signature teppanyaki dishes, but we decided to try their Grand Tasting dinner menu for our first visit. At $220, the menu isn't cheap for what you get, but with the FAR Card 50% discount, it becomes somewhat more reasonable.

Before dinner, we were served some home-made shrimp chips that were quite tasty. First course was a soft tofu with uni and truffle that was pretty good, though the truffle may have overwhelmed the flavour of anything else. The soup course was some sort of a fish chowder, which had a faint bitterness that tasted a bit like fish liver.

The sashimi course was, a bit disappointingly, a seared tuna tataki with garlic chips and ponzu sauce, rather than a proper plate of fresh sashimi. For a supposedly fine dining Japanese restaurant, this seemed like a bit of a cop-out. The garlic chips also overwhelmed the delicate flavour of the fish.

Next up was abalone with sliced eringi mushroom, slathered with a slightly dubious cheesy sauce, served with an edible deep fried baby crab. The braised dish was, to A's horror, a whole braised kinki dish in a sweet soy sauce. Surprisingly, it wasn't that hard to debone and eat, and the fish was really fresh and sweet.

Next was tempura of sea prawn, with head and tail included. The texture of the prawn was almost like crayfish or lobster, and of course I appreciated that the head was included. I think the tail section could have been fried a bit more though - the shell near the tail was a bit tougher, so it didn't crisp up enough to be crunched up very easily.

The Kagoshimya Wagyu beef was admittedly delicious. The meat was perfectly cooked and really flavouful. The same couldn't really be said about the Hokkaido corn fried rice though. It was completely bland, and was only edible after we added some miso soup, and the onsen tamago from the soup, to the rice.

Dessert was a fresh momo peach, which I think was a really good, simple way to end the meal.

Was I impressed? Overall, besides the beef, nothing really blew me away, and if not for the 50% discount I would have said it wasn't worth the money. But given how expensive it is to eat out anywhere these days, with the FAR Card discount it's pretty decent. We'll try to come back for their lunch sets and, if time permits, perhaps once more to try their a la carte offerings.

A says:

The food is good, but for the price, I expected to be blown away. Sadly, I was very let down. Totally not worth it.

Mikuni
Level 3, Fairmont Singapore
Tel: 6431-6156
Open daily
Lunch: 12:00pm to 2:30pmDinner: 6:30pm to 10:30pm