It’s Japanese-food heaven!

NO FEWER than six acclaimed Japanese restaurants have opened their first outlets in Thailand at Siam Takashimaya, the department store within Bangkok’s Iconsiam retail palace.
All are well known in their homeland and all are confident they can tantalise the Thai palate with their respective variants on omakase, teppanyaki, sushi and sashimi, donburi, tonkatsu and shabu shabu.

Masa by Otaru Masazushi offers omakase-style dining with prime ingredients, mainly from Hokkaido.

The new Rose Dining zone is decked out in a minimalist style with warm lighting and cosy wood furnishings. There’s a serene and undeniable Zen-like appeal to the area, where all six outlets have set up shop.
Famed sushi restaurant Otaru Masazushi, a mainstay of the harbour town of Otaru in Hokkaido for 80 years, imports fresh produce for its classy omakase meals for which the chefs set the menu according to seasonal ingredients.
The Bangkok outlet is called Masa by Otaru Masazushi. It has 10 seats along a dining counter that wraps around the open kitchen, as well as a private room big enough for six people.

Nishin (herring) sushi

Owner Takayuki Nakamura is delighted to be sharing the family legacy with Thais. His grandfather started out with a food cart 80 years ago and Nakamura has long been wowing guests in Otaru and in Tokyo with his mastery of the knife in preparing beautiful sushi and sashimi cuts.
“Hokkaido being an island has a great variety of seafood,” he says. “About 90 per cent of the ingredients we use here in Bangkok come from Japan, and we use high-quality local tiger prawns and squid as well.”

Uni sushi

In the curve of the wooden counter can be imagined the current streaming along the Otaru canal. Glass panelling is embedded with Japanese paper shaped into snow patterns above and sea waves below. 
For dinner there are the omakase course (Bt6,000) with amazing sushi and kaiseki, and the Mini Omakase (Bt4,000) with sushi, an appetiser, soup and dessert. At lunch there are sushi sets ranging in prices from Bt1,490 to Bt3,790. A-la-carte dishes are always available. 

Ika Somen

Considered a speciality of Hokkaido is Ika Somen (squid noodles, Bt790 a-la-carte). This is raw squid sashimi that Nakamura slices with a flourish into fine strips so they look like somen – thin noodles. 
The squid fin, body and tentacles all go into the mix with uni (sea urchin roe) and a cup of sauce filled with egg yolk. You dip the roe in the sauce and whip it to churn up some egg yolk. Slurping up the squid noodles is not only “okay” but encouraged – it’s the Japanese custom.
High in healthy omega-3 fatty acids, nishin (herring) is popular as sushi in Hokkaido. Priced at Bt390 a-la-carte, it is fatty flesh, but in this case, no dipping in soy sauce, because the overall taste is magnificent. Instead, the chef lightly dabs soy sauce on the fish alone, without touching the rice. 

Botan shrimp

Botan shrimp from Hokkaido makes another sushi marvel for Bt490. The thorax of the shrimp rests on one portion of rice while the fat and flesh of the head are wrapped with more rice and tied in nori (seaweed). Shrimp roe goes on top of both. 
The next restaurant is Kamui Hokkaido Dining, which, despite its name, actually hails from Yokohama. 
“The original outlet specialises in traditional dishes, but the Bangkok branch has a totally different menu focused more on teppanyaki and contemporary Japanese dishes to meet the style of Siam Takashimaya,” says chief executive officer Kido Takao, who also runs the ramen shop Baikohken on the ground floor. 

Kamui Hokkaido Dining highlights fresh sashimi and teppanyaki dishes using topgrade beef from Hokkaido.

“More than 60 per cent of our ingredients come from Hokkaido, while the vegetables, pork and chicken are all grown and raised here.”
The word Kamui refers to a divine being found in the mythology of the indigenous people Ainu of Hokkaido. The interior design has terra cotta and geometric elements lending a rustic, tribal ambience. The chefs can be watched through the wide kitchen window.
In teppanyaki, the star ingredient is wagyu beef raised in the Furano Basin at the foot of Mount Tokachi in the island’s Daisetsuzan National Park. 

The Chef’s Special Meat Plate

The Chef’s Special Meat Plate (Bt1,500) includes a platter of rib-eye steak, slices of A3-grade Furano wrapped in uni with wasabi sauce and egg-yolk ponzu, and teppanyaki-grilled pork that’s been braised for 10 hours.
Furano beef steak reappears in another dish too, sitting atop rice boiled in beef stock (Bt1,350). 

The Chef’s Special Sashimi Bowl 

The Chef’s Special Sashimi Bowl (Bt2,400) is a sizeable helping, the big bowl billowing with dry ice. It’s great with chutoro, otoro, akami, tai, salmon, tuna, saba, buri, uni, oyster and scallops – the last three are from Hokkaido. 
Tsukiji Takewaka was in existence at Tokyo’s Tsukiji – Japan’s biggest wholesale fish market – for nearly three decades before relocating across town to the Ikeburuko area. Its reputation for the absolute freshest seafood is unimpeachable. 

Count on Tsukiji Takewaka for the freshest possible seafood and great soba noodles.

The restaurant back home goes chiefly for the multi-course dining of kaiseki, but the choice in Bangkok is wide and varied. It too ships in about 90 per cent of ingredients from Japan.
“Thais love salmon and fried dishes, so we have those on the menu, such as fried tofu and fried soft-shell crab,” says manager Tomoyasu Machiya. “Our signature is soba noodles made fresh every day. You can watch the chefs kneading the dough and making the noodle in the kitchen.”

Tempura Seiro

Tempura Seiro (Bt490) has the buckwheat noodles chilled and served with shrimp and vegetable tempura. 
For fresh sashimi, opt for the Takewaka Seafood Bowl (Bt1,370) – a rice bowl filled with sliced salmon, buri, chutoro, hirame, scallop, unagi, engawa, botan shrimp, uni and salmon roe.

Takewaka Seafood Bowl

Salmon Skin Roll (Bt520) is a modern take on the classic roll-up, stuffed with rice, salmon flesh and skin, and cucumber, with nori and salmon roe sprinkled on top. 
Also in the Rose Dining zone are the tonkatsu restaurant Katsukura, shabu shabu restaurant Kissyan and Unagi Toku, where the speciality is unadon (grilled eel). 

MORE THAN SUSHI
The Rose Dining Zone is open daily on the fourth floor of Siam Takashimaya department store at Iconsiam.
Masa by Otaru Masazushi is open 11am to 3pm, and 5pm to 10pm. Call (02) 005 3800.
Kamui Hokkaido Dining is open from 10 to 10. Call (02) 288 0800.
Tsukiji Takewaka is open from 10 to 10. Call (02) 288 0204.