Yunaghi removes confusion from fusion food
YUNAGHI
(out of 4) OUTSTANDING Address: 538 Manning Ave. (at Harbord St.), 416-588-7862, yunaghi.com Chef: Tetsuya Shimizu
Hours: Wednesday to Sunday, from 5:30 p.m. to midnight Reservations: Recommended Wheelchair access: No Price: Dinner for two with cocktails, tax and tip: $240
Flames lick the charcoal in the open kitchen of Yunaghi.
Chef Tetsuya Shimizu holds a fat, cheesecloth-wrapped cylinder of cooked foie gras above the grill, letting the smoke caress the French delicacy.
A drop of liquefied duck liver spatters on the charcoal and sets off the smoke detector. The torchon is a freebie to mark the restaurant’s first anniversary.
Shimizu serves the foie gras not with a tart fruit sauce, like a French chef would, but with Japanese sweet red bean paste and white-chocolate marshmallows. It is revelatory.
So it goes at Yunaghi, a restaurant that distils Japanese and French cooking traditions in creative and delicious ways. Amoment of Zen First-time restaurateurs Yasuko Miyata and Yurika Ara opened Yunaghi last July 20 in the former Ici Bistro. The name means “a calm moment, like a beach sunset,” Miyata says.
Diners choose either seven courses ($68 a person) or nine ($80). Meals last about two hours, the menu shifting slightly week to week, with last call for food at 9:30 p.m. It’s not meant to be kaiseki — the formal seasonal cuisine of the principals’ native Japan — but rather full-on fusion food.
It’s most definitely not a sushi restaurant like Yasu Sushi Bar down the street. Most of the food at Yunaghi is cooked. Origami placecards Personalized origami birds mark reserved seats in the austere 26-seat dining room, where tables are set with black lacquer placemats and twisty chopsticks.
Servers describe each course thoroughly, explaining Japanese ingredients and kitchen techniques. They are polite and unflappable, taking orders for peach sangria ($13) and boozy lemonade ($12) even as the smoke alarm beeps, but can be distracted when the room is full. And the pressure of seating the next wave of customers shows one night when the server brings the bill without asking if we want anything else.
“No rush,” she says, but the message received is the opposite. Pretty and tasty The procession of miniature courses starts with a morsel of raw yellowtail splashed with green tea broth poured from an iron teapot. It sets a tone of playfulness and attractiveness maintained throughout two separate review dinners.
Next is a six-piece combo with exquisite visuals: Homemade tofu in jaunty porcelain; shrimp aspic on a woven basket; mackerel sashimi and cured chicken atop a woven mat; a purple lotus cup of braised octopus and rapini; and conger eel sushi on a banana leaf, sparked with yuzu and jalapeño purée. Radical chef Chef Shimizu, 38, wears a red Mohawk and black uniform. He worked at the now-closed Yours Truly and challenges cooking conventions with a foundation of solid technique.
In his kitchen, olive oil and soy sauce harmonize. He makes vichyssoise with dashi instead of the usual chicken stock; it pays off in delicacy. He splashes truffle oil and shaved cheese onto the jiggly savoury custard chawan-mushi; if you tire of this dish, you are tired of life.
There is a salad course that looks like an abstract painting and tastes like a dream; a garden come to life with pea shoots, summer vegetables and “soil” made from dehydrated black olives.
As we go on, the food seems to get simpler but is no less astonishing. The heat of North African harissa paste is brilliant against salmon fillets and pickled radish. Braised pork belly is paired with pickled key lime, sticky soy glaze and potato foam. Yet the pork is Yunaghi’s least consistent dish, the skin flabby one time and burnt another. Shimizu scrapes off the black with his chef’s knife like a fatty piece of toast. Strong endings Seven-course meals conclude either the Japanese or Western way (or both, with the nine-course option). Sticky rice moulded into a five-pointed cherry blossom is the Japanese way, dotted with savouries such as pickled ginger, honey mushrooms and sesame seeds.
Yunaghi even manages to nail dessert, a tricky course in the fusion world.
Here, Asian staples such as sweet red bean paste make new friends with chocolate mousse in a glass. Kabocha squash is not unlike a pie pumpkin when turned into a spiced purée rolled into sponge cake. Creamy lime cheesecake is topped with nut brittle, pistachio powder and Italian meringue.
Two worlds happily exist in the same kitchen, and it is smokin’. apataki@thestar.ca, Twitter @amypataki