Minori Japanese Restaurant,
The Royale Bintang Damansara Hotel (e@Curve),
No 2, First Floor, Jalan PJU 7/3,
Mutiara Damansara, Petaling Jaya.
Tel: 03-7959 9099, 012-228 2268
Business hours: Noon to 3.00pm,
6.00pm to 11.00pm daily.
EVEN after more than a decade of living in Malaysia, chef Hideaki Nakajima still stays true to the traditional methods of preparing his Japanese dishes.
“What you get at Minori is authentic Japanese cuisine. It is how I would do it if I were in Japan. We use the freshest ingredients we can get and we don’t use any MSG,” said the 48-year-old chef.
Minori Japanese Restaurant, located at the new Royale Bintang Damansara Hotel in Petaling Jaya, is the brainchild of Focus Point Holdings Bhd president and chief executive officer Datuk C.L. Liaw, who has a passion for Japanese food.
With a lot of dark-wood furniture and finishing, the interior of the restaurant has a clean-cut yet rustic feel, providing for a cosy venue, be it for a business lunch or family dinner.
Nakajima said some of the ingredients used in the restaurant, including the cuts for sashimi, were air-flown twice a week to ensure freshness.
Japanese touch: The yee sang comes with ingredients such as seaweed and crispy fried salmon skin.
One of the signature dishes is the Fujiyama Yoganyaki, which features a choice of meat grilled on a piece of volcanic hot stone specially brought in from Japan.
Diners can choose either beef, duck breast, chicken, seafood, abalone, ox tongue, or vegetables and mushroom.
“Some of our customers enjoy the process of grilling the meat themselves, but you can also request for us to grill it,” said Nakajima.
For starters, he recommended the Gyuniku Tataki Ponzu, which consists of slices of raw beef that are lightly grilled on the surface and served cold.
Besides the staple variety of sushi rolls, Nakajima recommended the Chicken Katsu Curry, a simple dish of rice served with chicken cutlets and a flavourful curry gravy.
“Unlike the ones you get here, our curries are not spicy. It is made with a Ramen soup base and boiled for eight hours with ingredients like potatoes and carrots,” he said.
Those who prefer noodles can opt for soba and udon while the ramen noodles at Minori comes with a choice of either soy sauce, salt or miso-based soup.
To cater to the lunch crowd from the surrounding offices, there is also an executive set lunch menu with a selection of main dishes that are served with sides like Chawan Mushi and miso soup.
This Chinese New Year, Nakajima decided to add a Japanese touch to their yee sang serving and the result is a unique platter made with freshly cut items like Japanese radish, cucumber, carrot, onions and ginger topped with sliced seaweed.
Popular dish: The Chicken Katsu Curry features fried chicken cutlets with a Japanese curry gravy served with rice.
Instead of the typical crackers, the yee sang is served with crunchy fried salmon skin which adds a unique flavour to the dish, which is available throughout February.
This is the writer’s observation and not an endorsement by StarMetro
