Review: Mikuni’s spring menu presents modern Japanese cuisine with theatrical flair

Or turn your attention instead to Mikuni’s other signature starter, a mixture of shredded snow crab and scallop covered with ikura and topped with a generous serving of sea urchin. The ensemble is incredibly rich and creamy, and the sea urchin adds rather than distracts. Edible flowers sprinkled over the top offer a wonderful floral balance to the dish. Other starters like the kampachi (amberjack) tartare served with wasabi soy sauce present an intense saltiness upfront before easing into the smokiness of the dashi it sits in. It’s topped with caviar that provides a welcome, briny taste to complement the nose-clearing spice of the wasabi.

Read more: We Went On A Gastronomic Journey At Mikuni And Loved It

Uno has an instinct for theatre, and it shows in his presentations. Starters are presented on lacquered wooden platters and decorated with real candles, miniature folding screens and crab shells for the look of a pristine Japanese garden. A small bowl of bubbling dry ice completes the presentation with a touch of drama. A plate of abalone, steamed then grilled on the teppanyaki counter, is flambéed tableside for yet another lick of smokiness and char. Drizzled with a green liver sauce, the abalone is impossibly tender without losing its chewy integrity, elevated by the liver sauce’s touch of bitterness and salt. 

Dessert is not left untouched with spectacle either. Frozen shiso leaf is personally hand-crushed and sprinkled over a saikyo miso-infused cheesecake. Paired with miso crumbs, balls of pear, yuzu-infused meringue biscuits and a fresh shiso leaf, the dessert is complex, savoury, herbaceous and textually interesting all at once. If fussy at times, the service moves with a clockwork precision to produce such carefully curated productions designed to stun.

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Uno even invites you to participate in his culinary theatre by offering personal shabu shabu platters. It’s a hard sell—why would you want to cook your own meat when world-class chefs could do it for you? But somehow it all works. Smoky dashi is served over flaming coals, equipped with a platter of shiitake and maitaki mushrooms, Japanese vegetables and a choice of either A5 Ohmi sirloin beef or Miyazaki pork loin. Flavour the soup first by adding the vegetables to the dashi, then stir in your cuts of meat for a few seconds. Before you know it you have a dashi hotpot that packs even more of a punch than before, slightly sweetened with the addition of vegetables and flavoured with fat from the intricate marbling from the meat. 

Other delicacies showcase Uno’s meticulous expertise and mastery over premium ingredients. A 24-hour braised Miyazaki pork belly braised in soy sauce, mirin and sake astonishes with its fall-apart tenderness, and this is complemented by the welcome bite of Japanese mustard and the crispiness of the fried burdock topping. 

Uno’s humble, unassuming demeanor belies his ingenuity, which presents a range of elevated Japanese delicacies that never come off as pretentious. He lets the ingredients speak for themselves. It’s no wonder that under his guidance, Mikuni continues to remain a darling among the Japanese restaurants in Singapore. 

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