Graze craze
Jan 31, 2007 |
Image: napua leong
The izakaya that quietly opened late last year across from Market City Shopping Center presents any diner with an omnivore’s dilemma, not a modern ethical or socio-cultural one as the recently-published book by that name explores, but a basic one stemming from the age-old question asked by a rumbling stomach: what, from this vast spread of appealing dishes, to order?
Perhaps you’ll get discs of yamaimo polka-dotted with ume and bonito sauce ($2.75)? ‘Ahi steak with its elegant escort of ponzu jelly sauce ($12.50) or nori french fries to dunk in wasabi mayo ($3.75)? Basic salted edamame perfumed by a red tea bath ($3.75)? May I suggest a shouchu cocktail made with camcam, a cherry-like fruit, to hydrate you while you browse?
Fortunately the refined, spare dining room invites lingering. There are high-backed tofu-colored booths; each makes you feel as if you’re tucked in a private dining chamber. Even the choral irashaimase (and its gong-like refrain of exclamation marks) that falls upon entering diners isn’t as chaotic as it is in other restaurants, and our server provided the most informative and ingratiating service I’ve encountered in a local izakaya.
It’s likely you’ll get snagged on the two-page tofu section of the menu. Twenty minutes into the meal my dining companion and I had yet to venture beyond tofu cast in varying character sketches. Purists will gravitate toward–and skeptics might be seduced by– an amiable serving of tofu with rich soymilk broth ($6.75). Order this popular dish and you’ll spoon the finished product as it swims in its liquid form, a calming mixture of soymilk and dashi under a dusting of shaved bonito–it’s a neat deconstructive trick (you can also get a tofu-seafood nabe to cook in soymilk, $15.95).
But at other times deconstruction worked less well. A grilled beef dish ($8.75) topped with cubes of cream cheese (better than you’d think), relied too heavily on its satellite seasoning, a dishlet of seasoned sesame oil; the beef, while tender, didn’t taste like it had been seasoned (even with salt) on its own.
We also made acquaintance with a beckoning tofu satsuma age, a deep fried ball of tofu flecked through with little bits of green nori ($6.50). Despite its fried provenance and crisp brown exterior, it was internally bland, and we preferred little balls of deep fried tofu mochi ($5.75) that came afloat ‘agedashi style’ in a scallion-scattered, subtly sweet broth with a clot of freshly grated wasabi to mix in. The mochi balls had a lightly fried skin that slipped away into addictive chewiness. There’s also a tofu croquette ball with two types of dressing ($5.75), a tofu and jyako salad with yuzu pepper dressing ($6.75) and for the uncluttered palate, fresh zaru tofu minimally attended by dipping dishes of plain and hoji cha salts ($5.75). An unheralded benefit to the sheer soy variety: Gazen would make a great destination for vegetarians (though many dishes contain fish-based dashi). Vegetarian or omnivore, because the menu is extremely well priced, your wallet won’t have a problem keeping up with your whims.
If those whims should build into entrÈe-style cravings, there are tetsuyaki dishes like grilled young hen with tomato herb sauce served with capellini and mizuna greens ($11.75). Unanimous cravings benevolently shepherded our table to the Gazen style ‘tsukune’ ($5.75), a moist, meaty cake of ground chicken whose lushness betrayed its ingredients, which I was reminded of only when I realized that basic Japanese-English lexicons might strip the dish–during the indecent frisk of translation– to its basest label: ‘chicken patty.’ The flavorful richness comes from the swath of bamboo leaf in which its cooked, and with its top slick of sweet soy-based sauce, this is one haute burger.
Among the rice dishes, the Kilauea is an entirely apt title for the hot stone pot of fried rice that arrived topped with a pair of shrimp. The dish combines the best textural parts of two peasant dishes: the fought-over rice crust in Korean dol sot bi bim bap and the soothing liquid shower of Japanese chazuke. Our server poured a seafood dashi over the mound of rice, and right away it bubbled and hissed like some diabolical lava. ‘You have to eat it fast,’ she cautioned, ‘otherwise it’s not going to have any dashi.’ It takes a nimble and intrepid diner to scoop the rice and molten broth into serving bowls before the dashi dissipates into a particularly fragrant steam. This dish declared that rice is no longer just an annex to a meal, a proof that rich and cheesy miso risotto, made from humble brown rice, further confirmed.
An artful dessert selection proves that the competition is wimping out with their standard scoops of green tea ice cream. Sweet potato mochi with Earl Grey sauce ($4.75) gets my vote for best innovative dessert I’ve sampled in the past year. It’s deep-fried yet feather-light and perfectly matched with a sweet tea syrup and vanilla ice cream. I didn’t get to try the houji cha panna cotta ($4.75), but my roving izakaya eyes and appetite have already tagged it for a future date.
Gazen
2840 Kapi’olani Blvd. across from Market City Shopping Center
(737-0230)
Hours: Daily 5-11:45pm
Recommended: Tofu in rich soy milk broth, deep fried tofu mochi ‘agedashi style,’ Gazen style ‘tsukune,’ Kilauea, sweet potato mochi and vanilla ice cream with Earl Grey sauce
Price Range: $2.75-$15.95
Payment: Disc, JCB, MC, V
Honolulu Weekly restaurant reviewers dine anonymously, editorial integrity being our first priority. Reviewers may visit the establishment more than once, and any interviews with restaurant staff are conducted after the visits. We do not run photos of the reviewers, and the Weekly pays the tab. The reviews are not influenced by the purchase of advertising or other incentives.
