An itch to scratch

Cork’s celebrity chef Takashi Miyazaki’s new ichigo ichie offers a 12-course haute cuisine Japanese experience, says Lucinda O’Sullivan, who, despite some eye-rolling over the pre-opening lead-up, couldn’t wait to try it

“What they’re selling is a Japanese haute cuisine experience... and, when you think of £300 a head in London, €95 seems reasonable”

The Araki in London, a tiny three-Michelin-star, nine-seater Japanese restaurant, with a no-choice sushi menu at a whopping £300, is one of the hottest foodie destinations in Europe. I mention this to prepare you for ichigo ichie, a new restaurant in Cork by Japanese chef Takashi Miyazaki. He has had thundering success with his eponymous tiny eatery/ take-out on the city’s Evergreen Street, seeing him rise rapidly to celebrity-chef status and becoming a food writer’s darling.

The red tape

His ambitious new venture is a 25-seater fine-dining restaurant in the former Fenn’s eatery, offering a traditional 12-course

kaiseki (a style of traditional Japanese cuisine in which a series of very small, intricate dishes are prepared) tasting menu at €95. There was considerable pre-launch hype, plus an announcement on Twitter as to when their booking system would be going live, coaxing us foodies to perch over our various screens on D-day to ensure a reservation.

You can only book online (up to three months in advance) — with your credit card, and with terms you must accept — which comes across as overly officious and daunting. Anyway, finger poised at the appointed hour, I bagged a table in the Nagomi Room — this area seats 12 — in front of the “chef ’s exclusive five-seater Kappou counter”.

The Zen Garden, inside the entrance door, was the third option. Ten days before our date, we had a call to ask were we still on for our booking, saying they had a “strict tardiness policy” and if we were 15 minutes late, we might miss a couple of the early courses. Thinking, then, that everyone would be kicking off at the same time, and not wanting to be late, I pitched up 20 minutes early, to find people already eating, and we just blended in as normal. The neo-Nordic nonsense, where a lot of this restaurant self-aggrandizement started, has a lot to answer for.

...and a partridge in a pear tree

Belying the over-zealous lead-up, everyone was delightful, and the delicately flavoured food was artfully presented. Listing 12 dishes, with all their little add-ons, would put you to sleep, so I’ll just give you the highlights.

Most of the food was cold, or lukewarm, involving seafood, lots of dashi (broth) and daikon (radish), and, oh boy, there must be a helluva lot of pre-prep in that kitchen, as each course came up very quickly — in fact, we were through in 90 minutes. Our first two courses came together:

Sakizuke — an appetiser of tofu mashed with broad beans, sesame, and local rhubarb; and nigiri sushi of mackerel and salmon with soy foam.

The star of the night for us was Hassun, pictured below left, a selection from land and sea. It consisted of exquisite ribbons of smoky-flavour Thornhill duck, spring onion, gizzard, hay and leek; tiny morsels of conger eel wrapped in wakame and cucumber ribbons, topped with salmon roe and sansho pepper vinegar; and a cube of bland asparagus tofu, cured ‘onsen’ egg yolk, whiting powder and salted cherry blossom.

Wanmono — a little bowl of broth — ginger and bonito dashi held a dumpling-consistency blend of daikon and flour, which was topped with Castletownbere brown crab and mitsuba leaves.

With a small tweak to the menu on the night, spring bonito was replaced with tuna in our next course, a Mukouzuke

sashimi trio of fish; and turbot was replaced with monkfish. The Castletownbere squid was there as billed, and each of those elements was topped with either quail egg yolk, dried garlic, or chive and ponzu gelee.

Daikon popped up again in a Nimono

yuzu miso broth with a crunchy bamboo shoot; while ox tongue in the Yakimono grilled course just wasn’t for us. There was a delicious chicken thigh and turbot fin, served with broad bean, in a custard-style egg dashi; rice bran with aubergine, and purple ninja radish; and channelled wrack (seaweed) with burdock, shitaki and dashi. It began to feel a tad samey, until we fell on the relief of a heavenly soya-milk chocolate bonbon.

Seize the day

What they’re selling is a Japanese haute

cuisine ‘once in a lifetime’ experience. When you think of £300 a head in London, €95 seems reasonable — about €8 per course — though you are committed to a large expenditure sans beverages. Sometimes less is more, so perhaps, for some, an eight-course option would be good.

With a delicious bottle of La Dilettante Vouvray Chenin Blanc 2016 at €44, water (€5) and service, our bill came to €262.90.