Minoru Restaurant

Minoru is a favourite restaurant and My wife and I often come to celebrate special occassions. Decor-wise, the place is simple and cosy, with bamboo being a theme and paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling. Various items from Japan adorn the walls of the restaurant and add to the quaint, homey, atmosphere. Food-wise there is a good variety of sashimi and sushi; you can also request what's in season from the chef, Chia-san.

Today 6 of us trooped down for a farewell lunch there and the food did not disappoint. As usual, we decided to let the chef decide on the menu. We started off with raw oysters - a first for me despite my many visits to the restaurant. The oysters were juicy, fresh, and were accompanied by a ponzu-based (I suspect) sauce whose tartness provided a nice counterpoint to the flavour of the oysters. Next up was the sashimi - fatty tuna, kampachi and salmon belly. Each slice was generous, tasted fresh, had a good texture and was thoroughly enjoyable. We had both freshly-grated wasabi and the processed-variety to choose from to eat with the sashimi. A mix of both provides a good balance of heat and flavour. For sushi we had unagi and uni nigiri. There were geneours portions of unagi and uni sitting atop the bed of Japanese rice. You have to make sure you manouevre the sushi in your mouth such that the unagi/uni rests on your tongue in order to truly experience its taste and texture. We also had reverse maki, which was my favourite sushi of the meal - the restaurant has this just right, biting into the sushi brings a burst of tastes and textures.

As for other dishes we had tempura mori, teppanyaki beef and vegetables and braised kinki. The kinki is quite a delicious fish, its meat was fatty, and its sweetness was enhanced by the sauce that it was cooked in. The teppanyaki items were ordinary. The tempura is crispy, has just the right amount of batter-coating and is certainly above average.

For dessert we had watermelon and ice cream. The black sesame ice cream here is certainly worth it - very rich sesame flavour, balanced with the right amount of milky goodness. The green tea ice cream is also delicious and both are served with a decent amount of red-bean topping.

Overall, the meal was a very enjoyable one, each dish was served one after the other leaving time in between for each dish to be savoured. I prefer this over the serve everything together methods some other restaurants employ. I would recommend this place for the sashimi and sushi. Though I did not try them this time round, the handrolls here are also something special.