Going Japanese

I’ve not yet gotten into the habit of taking pictures of each dish I eat. I’m an awful greediguts in this way. I admire the presentation almost in sync with reaching out and beginning to eat. As such, I have awful pictures of a fantastic birthday meal.  

I’ve known my buddy Sharon Lee since I began stringing for a little community newspaper called The Leader in 1995. I was an eager young cub reporter; she sold advertising. We got together when one of her restaurant clients wanted a review of his place. It was called Pakeeza in Lucky Garden in Bangsar and Sharon brought me along to write the story. The food was great, and she was good company too.

Over the years we have eaten together, cooked together, gotten drunk together, swapped cook books, lived together for a while in Brunei on another newspaper job and have generally been true friends to each other.

Over the years we established a tradition of birthday lunch at La Bodega for both of us. When I got married in 2006, it started getting a bit difficult to keep those lunches; and even more so when Erin along and I struggled with my unmotherly self.

When Sharon called me on Wednesday, I’d had a bloody awful day – one filled with glitches of the moronic management kind – and I chewed her out for calling me twice and then sending me texts. It’s hard to be my friend on a good day, and sheer torture on a bad one.

Thankfully, Miz Lee, who has seen me through one Kiwi dalliance, and a near shave with Mormonism, knows her irascible friend in and out and persevered with my dickering about whether we’d have dinner alone or with husband and kid in tow.

It turned out to be the former, as on Saturday Erin decided to be totally unlovable. I left the house and the ill-humoured toddler with both guilt and relief. I’d chosen Japanese because I knew after the hearty Deepavali lunch at my wonderful neighbours, the Sivashanmugams, I would need something fresher and less heavy on the palate.

Nagomi in Jaya One.

Modern Japanese decor makes a refreshing change.

Since eating at Nagomi with another amazingly talented Art Director friend, Pat Seow, I have liked the restaurant in Jaya One in Petaling Jaya. The food is good, service is really good, most times and the ambiance is not too try-hard Japanese, which means no Japanese folk music on constant repeat and cherry blossom prints on the walls.

I like how Alvin, one of the wait staff, pegged me as a person of taste and refinement and suggested I not take the house pouring sake. Unfortunately for him, I was in for cheap thrills where my drink was concerned, so he lost out on a sale. Still, I have to say their house sake ain’t half bad!

But what makes me sing Nagomi’s praises is the food. I love their ultra fresh sashimi platters. I ordered the RM60 one which offered three slices each of six different fish. There was both fresh and smoked salmon, tuna, butterfish, cuttlefish and whelk. I have to say that no other mall-type restaurant has ever rivaled Nagomi for its tenderness of whelk and ika. I love the milky taste of perfectly sliced cuttlefish, chased with cold sake.

I also got a platter of assorted sushi. Passable, but not as amazing as the sashimi. Sharon and I are both soup people, so we shared the mushroom hot pot which features a variety of mushrooms in light broth. Simple and good, though Sharon always pulls her face when I insist on waiting till my soups are cold before partaking of them.

Spinach teppanyaki which was massively oversalted.

The best use for salmon skin, ever!

To add some diffusion to the ensemble, I opted for an onion and soybean fried dish. I love how Nagomi, without prejudice, plates all their food beautifully, no matter if it is a RM200 selection or an RM8 side like my onion cakes which were amazingly light and delicious. Onions crisp so delightfully in a fryer and they taste so sweet, when done correctly, so this version of an onion loaf rocked my world!

After the appalling realization that I’d eaten everything with no photos to show, I decided to order some little sides to finish my sake with. The fried salmon skin is another amazing under RM10 dish. I love how the pieces are kept so large and intact and fried till they are as crisp as a cracker. Perfectly de-scaled, amazingly fried, it is sheer mastery.

The octopus tentacles were a little under seasoned for me, but still crunchy and chewy enough to pair nicely with the sake. My spinach teppanyaki was the let down of the meal, being overly salted. But really, I should know better than to order vegetables at a restaurant. I remain appalled that restaurants ranging from my corner coffee shop, right down to places like Nagomi would charge so much for a handful of greens.

Still, by and large, Nagomi is still one of the best Japanese restaurants to entertain at and eat in. Their list of specialty rolls are inventive, their sashimi faultless, their sides reasonably large in portion and they keep their pseudo Japanese catchphrases to a bearable minimum. It’s a place I’ll keep on visiting, but only on weekends or at nights. Parking in the building is terrible on work days, as it shares space with the adjacent office tower.

My meal of plenty set Sharon back about RM250. I’m really glad she thinks I’m worth that!