Food Picks: Sushi restaurant Ashino moves to Club Street
SINGAPORE – Sushi restaurant Ashino celebrates its 10th anniversary with a fresh menu and new dwelling. After spending the last decade at Chijmes, it is now parked in Club Street, under the terracotta feature fins of the Mercure Icon Singapore City Centre.
It occupies an otherwise nondescript unit, marked only by a fluted wooden door and khaki noren bearing the restaurant's name. Its interior is panelled in the same blond monochrome that characterised the Chijmes outlet.
There is something quietly reverential about the space, a tiny chapel flooded in shades of gold, to which chef Taku Ashino tends with priest-like devotion.
His quest for perfection is threaded through every last centimetre of the restaurant.
There are tiny tatami boards on which guests are to rest their cellphones to avoid scratching the tables carved from 100-year-old Hinoki cypress wood. Wasabi is contained in a clam shell. Sushi is glazed with a perpetual soya sauce that has been fermenting for as long as the restaurant has been in business.
Ashino celebrates its 10th anniversary with a new address in Club Street.
PHOTO: ASHINO
This maddening attention to detail extends to the processes unseen by guests around the 10-seater counter. Fish is dispatched by a respected supplier who specialises in shinkejime – a precise and humane method of killing that involves piercing the brain of the fish, thereby supposedly preserving its freshness and texture.
The sacrificial animal is then aged in chef Ashino's signature style or cured in kelp to allow its flavours to mature. This jukusei – the Japanese term for ageing – process takes anywhere from a few days to several weeks.
The other cornerstone of his craft is rice. He uses a blend of two varieties – one sweet and firm, the other nutty and sticky – to achieve that sublime balance. This mixture is then cooked in a Nanbu Tetsu iron kettle that distributes heat evenly and imparts a subtle aroma impossible to replicate with modern equipment.
Naturally, all this makes for very good sushi – uniquely vinegared rice blanketed in sweet, buttery chunks of fish that burst with umami and melt in your mouth.
As might also be expected, however, such thoughtfulness does not come cheap. Lunch omakase ranges from $165++ to $400++, while dinner is priced between $235++ and $450++.
To ensure that those opting for leaner courses can still get a taste of the chef's prized cuts, the restaurant has rolled out an okonomi menu, from which diners can select add-ons ranging from appetisers such as Sentosa steamed queen fish with soup ($8) to handrolls filled with negitoro ($40).
Items on this menu rotate with the seasons, but certain staples like irresistibly fatty otoro sushi ($35) and decadent uni handroll ($65) are mainstays.
Where: 01-12/13 Mercure Icon Singapore City Centre, 8 Club Street
MRT: Telok Ayer
Open: Noon to 2pm (Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays), 6 to 10pm (Mondays to Saturdays)
Info: sushiashino.com
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- Straits Times
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