L booked us all into dinner at this izakaya at the ground floor of Orchard Plaza for their take on casual dishes and easy tasty pastas — Bistro Du Le Pin. This is the second and more spacious 16-seater #01-34 unit for omakase that was up and running in 2021. The air-conditioning is better, and you won't leave stinking of cooking grease in a frying pan. Bistro Du Le Pin's original #02-25 corner hole-in-the-wall 12-seater is still there, and its menu offers more oden, anchovy cabbage, uni-ikura pasta and a la carte items.
Chef Shigeru Shirashi took over the original #02--24 unit since May 2015 and has run this place since, but I have not stepped in for a meal till tonight, and it's at his ground floor unit. As usual, these tiny bistros don't bother updating their socials after the pandemic restrictions lifted, and don't take reservations online. You'd have to do some good old voice calls to score a table.
At this #01-34 restaurant, the staff ran the two omakase dinner seatings like clockwork. For our 6pm seating, the appetizers were all laid out, including glasses chilled water. However, there was no menu to be seen. I also didn't ask about it. I simply decided that I wanted to be surprised. (Antihistamine taken.)
The appetisers of potato salad, chicken liver pate, shrimps in garlic and olive with toasted bread (like a gambas al ajillo), and cream cheese with pickles were placed for you to pick at will. Then the dishes came fast. Service was efficient in the clearing of plates and refill of chilled water. I liked the pace. We didn't have to wait too long for food to appear. It's pretty good value for this dinner. Loads of effort put in, decent plating, and an extremely acceptable quality of ingredients to make a tasty meal.
The kanpachi with garlic chips on miso paste was quite tasty. Clever of them to do it this way. The sashimi was cute — not the best cuts and a tad over-cured, but they were fine. The frozen creamy hiroshima oysters in scallions and ponzu were always a classic in many similar izakaya. The scallop was topped with ikura and sat in a cream sauce. I took two spoonfuls of that sinful cream sauce. LOL.
The tofu-prawn paste seaweed rolls were fun and tasty. I really enjoyed the tiny seafood nabe of bunashimeiji, abalone, crab bits and crab legs. It was well steamed and tasty. I should have asked for a small bowl of rice to go with it. Heh. The friends decided that their two bottles of wine would complement dinner better. The $30 corkage per bottle was worth it for a Burgundy 2011 white and a Napa Valley 2017 pinot noir. What an enjoyable dinner with great company!
For the meats, the next time, I would ask to skip the beef. While the wagyu ribeye from Miyazaki was beautifully seared medium pink, it was ridiculously fatty. I took three pieces, and that was more than plenty for me. The beef came with mushrooms and potatoes. Mushrooms were good-crunchy. Yay. The slices of potatoes were seared golden-brown and delicious. My only problem with the potatoes- they used truffle oil. They didn't use that much, so to many people, it might be okay. But I intensely dislike truffle oil, so that was a big no-no for me. As tasty the potatoes were, I couldn't finish them. If they had used regular oil, I would have eaten all the potatoes in a heartbeat.
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