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2013-05-15
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Of all the restaurants in Hong Kong, I came to RyuGin with the highest expectations. Watch some of the training videos on YouTube and you'll understand the incredible care and respect each ingredient in a finished dish receives. Chef Hideaki Sato trained under founder Seiji Yamamoto in Japan for 3 years before taking charge of the 2 Michelin RyuGin in Hong Kong. The menu is different from the 3 Michelin menu in Tokyo but based on the same philosophy and techniques.In the days leading up to dinne
In the days leading up to dinner, email correspondence was always answered in a timely manner. You're asked if there's anything you dislike or want to see. When the menu is finalized for the season, you're sent a copy and asked for feedback. I asked for fugu, but apparently that's both out of season and one of the few fine foods that's illegal in Hong Kong. The day of dinner, I received an email asking if I ate soft shell turtle or shark's fin because these take a while to prepare. I never saw the shark's fin that night, but ended up with something far more rare and fascinating.
When you arrive, there's a small envelope with the menu in it. Before service, Chef Sato comes out to see if there's anything you don't like or want to try. In spite of his immense talent and craft, he wears a smock of humility. You settle into the amazing views from the 101st floor of the International Commerce Centre and wait for the first course.
It's amazing to see a chef work this hard applying traditional and molecular gastronomy to fresh ingredients to get you to taste them the way you idealized they'd taste in the first place. Without a single bad dish and several stars, RyuGin belongs in the pantheon of must-visit restaurants in Hong Kong.
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1. Ice Fish: Small, mild fish are battered and fried but not crispy, served with Japanese vegetables that have been poached (then probably glazed) in dashi. The vegetables have a great bit past al dente bite that's perfect for these and they exude sweet bonito through and through. The ice fish also has that great soup base flavor. It's truly transformational cooking presented simply when the chef has taken bitter greens and mild fish and turned them into a play on textures and accents that enhance a complex dashi stock.
2. Agedashi in Three Textures: Agedashi is a traditional cooking method for tofu in Japan. In addition to tofu, there's a mochi cube and a yomogifu cube. The tofu was fantastic with the uni; it had just above soft density and added a creamy base for the intense uni to melt into. Less successful were the two chewier cubes that couldn't quite pull off the savory without seeming contrived. The dashi and uni combine to reconstruct red miso-like flavors, but in a way that's authentically sea-based. This reconstructed miso soup is what I wish all miso tasted like, but never fully does.
3. Abalone and Hotaru Baby Squid: This simple looking dish hides a lot of behind-the-scenes effort. It takes hours of slow cooking a large abalone to make it this tender. The broth that it's cooked in needs to be properly seasoned for it to retain the abalone meaty sweetness. Then there are the baby squid with cartilage removed and quickly poached that are so plump and fresh they taste as if they'd been stuffed with the tartare other baby squid. The fresh wasabi, seaweed salt, and lime all bring out different sides to these two star ingredients, but it's the seaweed salt that really opens up the sea in this dish.
4. Hamaguri Clam Soup: Two, big, beautiful clams in a soup made with clam juice and dashi. On the bottom are fresh peas in glutinous rice starch that add a complementary sweet note to the juicy and tender clams. Julienned bamboo shoots and seaweed add crunch. Sanshou leaf adds a mint-sorrel-purslane pungency that rounds out the complex flavor profile that's clearly anchored in clam.
5. Baby Tuna Sashimi: Lime, poached onion, thinly sliced raw onion, and baby shiso leaf give this a Japanese crudo character. The dipping sauce, a blend of three soy-based sauces gives it necessary anchoring salt. Baby tuna is definitely better than akami maguro, being milder and more tender, but it's still not in the class of even chutoro.
6. Whale Tongue Soup: Braised for hours in fish stock and served in dashi with Japanese vegetables. The tongue is porous, gooey and delicious. In texture (not taste), the closest analogy I can make is that it's like a cross between an aged tofu that's been simmering for so long that it's porous and soft, but filled with fresh mozzarella with it's chewy bite. In flavor, it's a blend of the collagen on otoro with the dashi that it soaked up in the long braise. There's also a side dish of a yellow pepper paste that taste like mild bird peppers and adds a nice optional kick.
7. Kinmedai: Roasted alfonsino fillet crusted with rice, served with thinly sliced green apple and bitter greens / seaweed. Alfonsino has a bright red skin and big eyes that distinguish it from snapper or bream. It tastes like a firmer snapper with more well-integrated collagen. If alfonsino were fresh Spanish baby lamb leg, red snapper would be vacuum-packed US supermarket lamb leg in the bargain bin. This is worlds better with cleaner, more tightly integrated fish flavors without the off-putting bitter blood line character that taints the finish on red snapper. The crispy rice adds toasty notes and texture. The apple acids are a welcome break between bites, as are the bitter greens that remind you of the purity of the alfonsino's flavors.
8. Wagyu Sirloin Sukiyaki: Very East-meets-West with white asparagus and morels in this subtly sweet teriyaki broth. The 63 degree egg that takes 40 minutes in an immersion circulator to make adds the extra touch of texture and cream that blends the flavors together. The sirloin is A3-6, cooked to medium-rare and sliced thinly enough to remain tender. The classic combination works with the asparagus being the grassy element growing from the earth element (morels), that gets eaten by the cow that all gets eaten by you!
9. Rice with Sakura Shrimp: This looks like a standard Asian dish of rice with dried shrimp seasoning, but is executed with such great ingredients and skill that it becomes fine dining. Intense, sweet and briny nose. The shrimp have a little crunch and a lot of sweet flesh before they melt into fluffy rice. The aftertaste is shrimp consommé all over. The cold greens with fried tofu halt the shrimp aftertaste long enough for you to appreciate just how fantastic it is when you return to the rice. The miso is slightly intense and delicious with soft bean curd skins adding a more texturally interesting feature than simple tofu.
10. Soft Shell Turtle: What a beautiful rice dish, with everything melting into place! The soft shell turtle is raw and tastes a bit like mussels but combined with the 66 degree egg yolk, it takes on a uni character. Mochi strips are thin enough to just melt into the rice grains, adding a textural rice-on-rice play against the urchin. Seaweed builds up the umami.
11. Tomato with Plum Shaved Ice: After seeing the strawberry and peach desserts in prior seasons, this was a bit of a let-down because the savory part of the tomato isn't fully tamed. You break the candy bubble to cut open the ripe tomato. The plum gratinée is the right choice in bridgeable acidity to bring the tomato towards the sweet, but the finish returns to the savory. It's refreshing and technically flawless, but in ways more intellectually than physically pleasing.
12. Sakura Meringue, Almond Ice Cream, Fresh Strawberries: Break through the crispy, melt-in-your mouth meringue to get at the fantastic almond ice cream that has such a velvety texture you want to roll around in it on a hot summer's day. It's just lightly almondy, bringing you the best sweet almond flesh center taste and none of the bitter husk. The strawberries add a sweet tartness. The poached sakura leaf is salted and adds brine that helps each sweet element more clearly delineate itself.
-tastecompendium
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