Wabi sabi savour
Taking a trip down the diverse Japanese menu at Kisso
Kisso has long been a familiar name on Bangkok’s Japanese restaurant scene, and over the past 23 years — since it first opened — has thrived in this highly competitive, fast-evolving industry.
Situated on the 8th floor of the Westin Grande Sukhumvit, Kisso boasts a contemporary Japanese feel under a discreet design concept that embraces transience and imperfection.
The 110-seater with two private rooms (each accommodating up to 24 guests) and a 14-seat sushi bar is said to be one of the city’s most coveted destinations by Japanese when craving their native cuisine.
In fact, 80% of the clientele are Japanese — business execs, families and tourists alike. The cuisine, a full spectrum of Nippon culinary culture, focuses on authentic flavours of top-notch seasonal produce with ingredients imported fresh from Japan three times a week. Its kitchen is directed by chef Chatree Pangsil, whose decency and scruples in Japanese cooking are much celebrated by his diners.
You can say that Kisso offers some of the most extensive selections of fine Japanese dishes in town. Its menu incorporates à la carte items, kaiseki meals, omakase sushi fare, bento boxes, lunch sets and seasonal specials.
The restaurant is treasured for its sumptuous offerings of kaiseki, a multi-course dinner that exhibits an artistically balanced craftsmanship of Japanese cookery equivalent to Western haute cuisine.
A traditional kaiseki meal usually includes an appetiser, a selection of sashimi, a simmered dish, a grilled dish, a steamed course and a main entrée.
Kisso’s special eight-course kaiseki menu (4,000 baht) started with a platter of maguro tataki (partially-seared tuna fillet), Saga wagyu beef aburi (flashtorched beef on sushi rice) and unagi nigiri (glazed eel sushi). All three were beyond criticism.
This was followed by a piping-hot bowl of madai kinoko osui (red seabream and mushroom soup), a small portion of delicate tofu with sea urchin and salmon roe topping and a sashimi platter that including chutoro (fatty tuna), hamachi (yellow tail), hirame (flounder) and also some amaebi (sweet shrimp).
A deep-fried item — taraba tempura — came next. The dish was praiseworthy for how well the cooking retained the naturally sweet taste and supple texture of the Japanese crab.
Brilliantly representing the main course was Saga wagyu beef. You can have this champion-grade beef, which features intensely marbled meat, either cooked robatayaki-style on a charcoal flame, or flash-seared on a hot stone provided on table.
I opted for the latter and found the dish — showcasing uncooked strips of the pinkish wagyu beef to be cooked on the sizzling stone — offered a heavenly mouthfeel that promises to draw tears of joy from even the most hard-hearted beef connoisseurs.
PATIENCE IS THE SPECIAL INGREDIENT THAT BRINGS THE BEST RESULTS IN COOKING. THE INGREDIENTS DON’T BECOME A DELICIOUS DISH UNTIL THEY ARE INFUSED WITH THE CHEF’S SOUL. Chef Chatree Pangsil of Kisso Japanese restaurant.
The set came with rice, miso soup and pickles, finished off by an assortment of fresh fruit and plumwine jelly.
Should you not be in the mood for a long multi-course dining affair, there’s a sweeping collection of à la cart dishes for you to choose from.
The 180-item à la cart menu lists traditional appetisers, salad, hot pot and kami nabe, charcoal-grilled and deep-fried items, rice bowls and noodles as well as a selection of classic and creative sushi rolls.
Sashimi and cooked seafood salad (470 baht) proved a light, refreshing and tasty choice to kick off the meal. While those looking for a more lavish-tasting starter are guaranteed a high contentment from grilled eel and foie gras in balsamic teriyaki sauce (890 baht).
Among Kisso’s most popular items is the Salmon Lover Box (580 baht). As its name suggests, this multi-item salmon-centric dish proved not only sumptuously delicious but value for money. Served in a nine-compartment wooden box, the dish offered salmon in various cooking styles and tastes. Expect to find it grilled with teriyaki sauce, as part of a salad, on top of sushi, sashimi-style and simply pan-roasted.
Another dish I really loved, the miso-marinated snow fish (620 baht), is recommended for the high quality of the imported fish as well as how the meticulously flavoured meat. For up to four days, the fish had been marinated in Japanese fermented soybean paste before being grilled over a charcoal flame to yield a tasty and velvety meat.
The restaurant has a complete line-up of sashimi and sushi, both classic and house-created, including otoro (fatty belly of the premium tuna), engawa (flounder’s fin), anago (sea eel), torigai (cockle) and Hokkaido scallop.
Of decent dessert options, Japanese-style ice-cream parfait (200 baht) and shaved ice on strawberry or greentea syrup, condensed milk and red beans (190 baht) were delightful.
Complementing the superb cuisine was efficient service.