Dinner at Akanoya, Singapore

On this evening we'd actually intended to go to Akashi, a Japanese restaurant, for dinner. Sadly enough it was fully booked and they wouldn't have a seat until 9 pm. Instead we decided to head next door to check if they had a spot. The restaurant next door is Akanoya a Japanese Robatayaki restaurant and belongs to the same group as Akashi. Robatayaki is a style of eating in Japanese cuisine, where fresh ingredients are openly displayed and you choose what you want to eat and the chef will prepare it for you. The items are grilled over charcoal and handed over to the customers with a long paddle.

The choice of ingredients is vast with items ranging from chicken to seafood and vegetables. Everything looked so fresh. As an appetizer we were presented with some ginko nuts seasoned with some miso like paste? Not to sure about that.

The first thing we got to try were grilled green asparagus. My friend noted that the asparagus wasn't that fresh, but for what is available in Singapore I thought it was pretty good. Also I loved the slightly charred taste on the crunchy asparagus.

The second dish was a pork belly skewer. I love how wonderfully tender the meat was and we could just pull it off the stick. It wasn't chewy at all and I really enjoyed the marinade.

Then we had grilled baby eggplants, which were also really good, slightly hard to eat though since you really had to eat it one bite. Love the glaze on it.

Another vegetable dish we got some grilled leeks. I loved these especially dipped into the sauces that we were given. There was a nice crunch on the outside of the leeks, whilst they were nice and soft inside (there was still a slight crunch).

We also got Tebasaki, a chicken wing. This was probably one of my favourites of the night. The meat was tender and soft and the marinade on the outside of the chicken was nice and slightly sweet.

The fish we ordered was the Kinki, which is rock fish. This is supposedly a must-order here and I'm glad that we did. I really loved the fish and the skin was nice and crispy whilst the fish meat was really soft.

Tori Tsukune, this dish was divine. It's minced chicken with poached egg in a slightly sweet salty sauce. I believe the poached egg was sous-vide rather than poached, since we saw them peeling the entire egg and the egg coming out like this. I think that this was the best dish of the night, although the crunchy bits in the minced chicken skewer were a little odd. Actually I probably would've been very happy with just the egg and the sauce.

For dessert we were presented with a piece of melon and a grape mochi. This dish is given to everyone just like the appetizers. Separately I also ordered some ice cream, since that's the only dessert they have available. I got one scoop of Yuzu and one scoop of Black Sesame. I loved the freshness of the Yuzu, whilst the Black Sesame was nice and creamy. A nice sweet ending.

#review #restaurant #singapore #japanese