Treat Yourself With a Lavish RMB 1,280 15-Course Japanese Meal at Dongsi Kokorowa
Recently we've focused on a number of cheaper Japanese restaurants that do the trick when you're scraping together the last yuan of your paycheck, but now that payday has arrived you may want to splash out, and traditional Japanese restaurant Kokorowa at Dongsi is the perfect choice if you're looking to treat yourself.
Kokorowa means laidback or inner peace in Japanese, a concept which the restaurant reflects well with its difficult-to-spot floor-to-ceiling outer glass wall, decorated with only a small pink sakura tree and a small rock garden. Don't try and go in through the iron door, which will take you straight to the kitchen, but instead, press a small silver button to the right of the glass wall, opening a door that takes you through to the restaurant.
You may remember that we reviewed a 10-course dinner set at Sun Japanese on Xinyuan Jie, with three different dinner sets at RMB 380/580/1,080, while Kokorowa pushes this to another level – for RMB 1,280 you will get 15 courses including sushi (without alcoholic drinks), the dishes are executed by their two chefs, one Chinese, and the other Japanese. There’s no set menu; instead, you sit around the 10-seat wooden bar and eagerly peer at what the chefs are cooking up in front of you.
We were lucky enjoy to be invited to try their food, which was outstanding (although your menu might be different, depending on the mood of the chef). Kokorowa's owner is from Tianjin, and runs a seafood import business as his main bit, which really shone through in the freshness of every ingredient used throughout our meal.
We started with honey sugared Tianjin chestnuts, and Canadian uni (sea urchin), which was seasoned with soy sauce, hand-ground wasabi, and ice to enhance the uni's sweetness. These dishes were followed with a luxury sashimi platter (pictured at top) – which included fat spot prawn, mackerel scad, Spanish thick-cut tuna, and oyster topped with caviar, probably the freshest I have ever tried. At this point I understand why people say that amazing food can make you cry, yes, I thought I could cry then.
One of our favorite courses was the roasted potato with pollack roe, made with mayonnaise, olive oil, and pollack roe drizzled in an acidic and spicy sauce, bringing more complex flavors into play. The way this dish was made was in itself a show, the chef using a butane torch to heat it until the whole bowl was bursting with flame and the surface of the mayonnaise puffed up and turned brown.
Our second favorite was the grilled silver pout, served with crispy skin and succulent, juicy chunks of meat. There were also grilled wagyu beef slices with cashew nuts, cucumber, and fermented malt, alongside a pomelo sauce, making for a rich and playful mix of synchronized flavors and textures. The wagyu was then followed by four more delicious courses: sushi, soup, tempura globefish, and grilled scallops with nori.
To round our experience off, we were served honeydew melon from Shizuoka, sweetened and soaked in Japanese whiskey soaked for a boozy disgestif kick.
The whole evening was incredible, and this is a treat worth saving up for. Really, if you think about it, that's only two or three nights of drinking, right? Once you've saved up, make sure to call in advance as the restaurant can only seat 10 customers a day.
Kokorowa
Tue-Sun, 5-10pm. 35 Cuifu Jiadao, Dongcheng District (6401 6101)
东城区崔府夹道35号
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Email: tracywang@thebeijinger.com
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Photos: Wang Yang, Tracy Wang
