I finally made my way to kaiseki restaurant Imamura. When we arrived at the restaurant, there's a stone path leading into it. The staff had thoughtfully suggested for women not to wear heels to dinner. Don't wear too warm either. The AC works, but the burners and cookers keep the room warmer than it should be. In contrast, the bathrooms were freezing. The restaurant is located in a charming standalone venue in Sentosa. It's a refurbished chapel within the grounds of Amara Sanctuary Resort, but it isn't a restaurant managed by the hotel.
I hadn't come by earlier because it isn't exactly convenient to me when it's on Sentosa. Most importantly, I don't have three hours to spend on a long dinner, and there're very few people I want to spend this time with. Found a window, and off J and I went. Imamura's 'Signature Menu' is recommended for first-time diners. To keep it fresh for returning diners, they have a 'Seasonal Menu' that rotates on the odd month.
If you're a purist, then this is a newfangled kappo-kaiseki restaurant since we sat around the counter. But in this Singapore context, there's no point for us to sit in a stiffling tea room. I'll still say that with this menu, it's kaiseki and by the end of dinner, I understand why many hail this as the best kaiseki restaurant in town. I totally agree. Every item is a performance and a work of art. I don't think I'll talk about everything on the Signature Menu I opted for. Go taste it for yourself!
Tonight, the magic of Imamura lies in its meticulousness of Chef Hirofumi Imamura and his well-trained team. Their firm respect and belief for the food tailored all the complementing flavors on the menu. The chef had so many stories about the farmers he sources from, and how they treat their products or animals. He wanted them to be ethically raised and grown. The chef's hometown is Fukuoka and he's very proud of the produce, and tries as much as he could, to import items from small farms and businesses from his hometown, including the nori for the negitoro temaki.
We were already blown away by the appetizer of cold chawanmushi with crab leg. It was extravagantly perched on a cube of ice. Yup. ICE. That truly set the tone for food this evening. We had three pieces of the sliced up abalone each. I was thinking, just GIVE ME THE WHOLE ABALONE ALREADY. Hahahaha. It was briny and tender, served with abalone liver sauce, white asparagus, green asparagus, lotus, myoga ginger, turnip and kagabuto cucumber.
The amadai and somen with manganji peppers, white taro stem and baby yuzu was delicious. That dashi was simply beautiful. The grilled kinki with Satoimo taro, Kujo-negi, and lily bulb was absolutely delicate. By this point, I had already decided that when I next visit, I'm definitely going to request for all fish in the Seasonal Menu, and hold off the tuna. There is one item of tuna on the menu, which unfortunately uses bluefin tuna. It turned out to be a negi-toro temaki. LOL I'll live. I stifled all my laughter because this must be the most atas negitoro temaki I have eaten. Subtle differences, which makes this a great temaki, but yes. It's still negitoro.
While brilliantly executed, I'm not hot about the beef and pigeon. They arrived in the form of a Mizusako farmed Kagoshima wagyu, Maru-nasu, burdock, wariboshi daikon, and snow pea. The chef heated up up the thin slice of beef on a 64dC porcelain slab, and finished up by ironing it in a binchotan-heated copper pot. J doesn't take beef, and her cooked meat was a pigeon was smoked and grilled, served with eggplant, baby bamboo shoot, snow peas, wariboshi daikon, egg foam. It held minimal game stink.
I was looking forward to tasting the gohan. I wasn't disappointed but I was just mehhh with it. It was a donabe of Nanatsuboshi rice with truffle, and bordier butter served with pickled vegetables and miso soup. The rice was done well; the truffles, not so. I'm not a fan of truffles. So I really didn't need the chef to shave so much Australian and Italian truffles into the rice. That wasn't tasty at all. I'm going to ask for the seasonal rice the next round, say using keiji (chum salmon) or matsutake. In fact, any seasonal fish (except tuna) or mushrooms would do. I loved how they packed the leftover rice for us in the form of an onigiri. They were soooo extra that they secured it in a traditional bamboo skin before packing it in a lined fabric drawstring bag. WIN LOR.
There were desserts loads. Three items + tea! There were many appetizers and desserts not printed on the menu. I suppose that gives the chef some leeway in deciding what to prep and give us for the night, and to make each diner feel pampered and special. There were so many stories behind the food. It wasn't just clinically told to us. There's some warmth, which we appreciated. There was an earlier premium sashimi dish (uni, flake and caviar and shoyu jelly) emulating the jackpot machines. We had cotton candy and a tale of cotton candy sticks at pasar malam.
Then there was the main dessert of a Japanese cheese ice-cream, daitokuji bean tuile, plum with white bean paste mochi. There were fruits, and finally a bowl of matcha and brown sugar pudding to end the night with. I think I'll skip one dessert and the matcha the next round. It's too much sugar and too much caffeine.
Luckily I decided not to drink so much. It would have been a complete sugar overload. J wasn't drinking, and it was just me. So I wisely kept it to one housemade umeshu that was really robust and layered, and an easy 200ml of Miyakanbai sake. Drinks are expectedly pricey, and it's obvious that bottles of whisky and sake are at the optimal price point. Heh.
Three hours for dinner. J and I chatted and caught up with each other for all the weeks we hadn't really talked IRL. We've only been texting extensively. Hahaha. At the end of the delightful night, we were sent away with a drawstring bag containing a complimentary box of hōjicha (loose leaf in sachets). How thoughtful.
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