Matsuhisa: Still A Long Way To The Far Eastern Standards

One of the top choice destinations of the Far East enthusiasts, Nobu is a chain restaurant that came to life with the partnership of Japanese Chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa and Robert De Niro whom we came to know through his memorable acting of the young years of Vito Corleone.

Chef Matsuhisa opened his first restaurant in Alaska and called it with his own name. While the restaurant went a long way in its first 6 months, the chef wanted to give a break to his non-stop working throughout these months, and then the restaurant was accidentally set on fire and burned to ashes. After he lost everything he owned, Matsuhisa began to run a Japanese restaurant in Los Angeles upon an invitation from his friends. With the money he saved in 9 years working for the restaurant, he opened another restaurant named Nobu Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills, 1987. In his new restaurant, he again took up Japanese cuisine which he then thought was a bit of monotonous and reworked the cuisine with Peruvian flavors. His signature dish, again, was an Alaskan fish called black cod as it had been in his first burned-out restaurant. While the restaurant’s fame was quickly escalated, soon some of the red carpet people began to visit it as well. Among them, Robert De Niro who loved the restaurant’s black cod and frequently paid a visit, then came up with a proposal for Matsuhisa to open a new restaurant. The chef had to reject him telling him that he was not ready yet, however he cut a deal with the movie star after four years when he came up with the proposal again. Although in fact De Niro wanted to use the name Matsuhisa as the name of the new restaurant, the chef told him that “No, Matsuhisa is my name. I can only give you my first name,” and the first of many, the Nobu Restaurant was opened in New York City.

Today, you can find the Nobu Restaurant in various great cities such as Miami, Los Angeles, Malibu, Dubai, London, Tokyo, Cape Town, Budapest, Monte Carlo, Kuala Lumpur and many more. By the summer of 2014, the Nobu Restaurant finally came to Turkey, again with a beautiful location like Yalıkavak, Bodrum. By the way, the difference of the restaurants with the name of Matsuhisa from the ones named Nobu is that they go with the concept of fine dining.

In addition to the ones located in the United States with Aspen, Vail and Beverly Hills restaurants and in Germany with Athena and Mykonos restaurants, the 6th Matsuhisa Restaurant was opened in Munich, located in Mandarin Oriental Hotel, the place where I call my second home following all the time I spent there in my last 15 years.

Proper to its concept, the restaurant has a very chic ambiance. Along with a la carte menu, it also offers omakase menu, which draws upon the selections chosen by the chefs. I personally think the a la carte menu is a bit longer than expected since it is very difficult for a new restaurant like that to offer a satisfactory quality for all these dishes listed.

As we went for the omakase menu, we started out with a tomato-ginger version of dashi, a sort of stock the Japanese use for almost every soup they make. The second dish was tuna tataki. Accompanied by Karashi mustard sauce and lime mousse to look true to its original version, it was quite an enjoyable dish for me. Following dish, yellowtail dry miso was flavored with Hawaiian orange salt with volcanic clay. The dish was a bit acidic due to a mixture of dried beet, yuzu sauce, garlic crisps, chives, lime and olive oil.

We had white fish, red shrimp sufclam and anago for sushi selection. Because anago, a sea fish, yields an average quality sushi, I always prefer unagi, fresh water fish, as much as it agrees with my palate. Following the next dish, salmon sashimi accompanied by fresh salad and flavored with spicy lemon dressing; the last seafood dish on the menu and the signature dish of all Matsuhisa Restaurants arrived at the table: black cod served with fresh lemon grass crisps. For its sauce, a little garlic and some honey are added into miso sauce which is flavored with some mirin and sake; sake kasu is soaked in this mixture which may also include orange peels or truffle oil from time to time. What is different in Matsuhisa’s presentation from the other Far Eastern restaurants was that the fish was served on top of a wide banana leaf.

The biggest frustration of the night was wagyu steak. Because, I guess, the meat was not marbled enough which pretty much ended up having a different flavor than the ones I had in Japan and the Far East all over.

Following the wagyu, we ended the night with chocolate bento box, sort of a warm chocolate cake. Our dining experience proved that the restaurant has still a long way to go in order to attain the Far East standards in terms of its menu planning and cooking techniques. Plus, I think that the variety of sake was a bit limited for a fine-dining restaurant. As such, the Matsuhisa restaurant was a notch below the Nobu Restaurants. However as I had the opportunity to have a try at the restaurant in its first days, I believe that its profile will mature towards the middle of the year and I’ll give it a second try, which I think everyone deserves…

Bon appétit and enjoy the taste of life…

Matsuhisa

http://www.mandarinoriental.com/munich/fine-dining/matsuhisa-munich/

Mandarin Oriental Munich

Neuturmstraße 1, 80331 Munich, Germany

+49 89 290981875