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Forbes
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
For An Intimate Taste Of Peruvian-Japanese Cuisine, Kansha On New York's Upper East Side Is A Personal Statement Of The Chef
The cooking at Kansha shows the modern breadth of Peruvian-Japanese cuisine. Even in Lima, where exciting Japanese-Peruvian restaurants abound, Kansha ('gratitude') would be a contender. Here on New York's upper east side it is a stand-out via Chef-Owner Jorge Dionicio, who has worked at Morimoto, O Ya, Akashi, Hirohisa, Azabu, and, most recently, Sushi Noz. The Peruvian connection with Japanese food began back in the 1980s after Nobu Matsuhisa moved from his home in Saiatama to Lima, where he developed his style of incorporating Pervian ingredients, not least chile peppers, with Japanese. After moving to open his namesake place in Beverly Hills, that style became popular with Americans used to fusion cooking. Horge Dionicio is a Peruvian chef who earned a black belt in sushi making in Japan. Dionicio is himself Peruvian and emigrated to the U.S. in 2002, starting his culinary career at UCHI in Austin, Texas, then travelled to Japan to perfect his sushi craft at the World Sushi Skills Institute, receiving a Kuro Obi (black belt) certification there. He then did a stage at the renowned Cala and Maido in Lima. At Kansha Dionicio uses all imported seafood from Tokyo's Tokyo's Market along with Peruvian ingredients such as white choclo corn, quinoa and aji amarillo peppers. The one-page menu is categorized by Cold Tasting, Nigiri, Maki, Starters, Hot Tasting and has only 16 seats downstairs and a six-seat omegas counter upstairs. Kansha is a small storefront space, brightly lit, minimally decorated and for its size (16 seats) not particularly loud. Upstairs is an six-seat omekase counter made from a 100-year-old Hinoki tree (the price of the meal is $145 here). Downstairs our party of four just left ourselves in Dionicio's hands, asking for selections from each of the menu sections, though I just had to order pop-in-the-mouth rock shrimp to dip into garlicky tocoto aïoli with takuan Japanese pickle. Within the Cold Tasting category we enjoyed a ceviche with leche de tigre, cilantro and those fat Peruvian choclo corn kernels. Tiradito sashimi with Peruvian fruits and vegetables has become a classic. Tiradito has become something of a classic within Peruvian-Japanese food, a sashimi (we had blue fin tuna) with an aji amarillo and chalaca sauce of citrus, onions, tomato and chilies. Sleek hamachi yellowtail came with Serrano peppers and wonderful crispy potatoes, while lustrous king salmon was dressed with ponzu and a wasabi salsa that was delightfully mild so as to not clash with the delicacy of the fish. Our Hot Tasting item was a taco of very tender grilled octopus, with aji, puka, and waka Thai. All fish is imported from Tokyos' seafood market at Kansha The came an array of lovely sushi, each species distinctive from each other, velvety, supple and served at the right temperature. The sake maki of salmon came with a lightly sweet caramelized dashi wasabi salsa; bluefin tuna maki was married to with small kyuri Japanese cucumber and shiso; shiro maki of madai fish was sided with avocado, olive oil and lemon zest. Picarones are Peruvian donuts made with sweet potatoes We ended our meal with a trio of ice creams that included an interesting sample of matcha, black sesame and lucuma sugar. Picarones, Peruvian donuts, made with Japanese Okinawan sweet potatoes and Kabocha. There is a tiny cocktail bar and the wine list, though small, works with this kind of food. So much at Kansha is new but nothing is overwrought. Every ingredient compliments each other, with the seafood as the underlying inspiration. So, if you can't put up with the huge and cacophonous Nobus in New York (or elsewhere around nthe world), Kansha is both a relief and s starting point for learning about this enticing 1312 Madison Avenue at 93rd Street 646-833-7033 Open nightly .
The Guardian
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bangkok Diners Club, Manchester M4: ‘This will soon be one of Manchester's hottest dining tickets' – restaurant review
Bangkok Diners Club feels a bit as if it's tucked down a humid Rattanakosin sidestreet in the Thai capital's old town, rather than in a room above a pub 6,000 miles away in Ancoats, Manchester. Husband-and-wife team Ben and Bo Humphreys have brought their joint skills to the Edinburgh Castle, an elegantly restored 19th-century pub with an upstairs restaurant that in recent years has made quite a name for itself; before the Humphreys' arrival, this same space was the lair of Winsome's Shaun Moffat, where plaudits and gongs were in ready supply, but then Moffat got his hands on his own place and this upstairs room needed a pair of cool, capable hands to take over. Look no further than Ben and Bo, who have a pedigree in forward-thinking Thai cuisine. Bo was born and raised in Thailand's north-eastern Isaan region, before moving to Bangkok in her teens, while Ben has cooked at Manchester's Thai fusion restaurant District and, before that, at Tattu, Rabbit in the Moon and Lucky Cat. After the closure of District in 2022, the couple spent three years eating their way across Thailand and the US, picking up inspiration for dishes in which authentic Thai flavours, and occasionally Bo's family-favourite recipes, could merge with the Korean and Mexican barbecue flavours of Miami smokehouses. Here, heat, citrus, fresh turmeric, shrimp paste and all the complexities of Bangkok cuisine meet relatively sleepy, low-and-slow American barbecue. Yes, many chefs in Bangkok do indeed cook over live fire, but the flames there are generally a little more lively than those permitted in this tiny kitchen of a wooden-floored pub in north-west England. And when Bangkok meets Manchester via Miami, you get the likes of pork jowl taco with a rich, smoky, burnt-tomato jaew, and southern Thai mutton gaeng khua that's hot with black pepper and dried red chilli, and served with pickled celeriac and fresh roti. Bangkok Diners Club claims to be new and innovative, as, let's face it, every new restaurant does, but they actually have a valid point here. This small kitchen slinging out raw bass with silky calamansi nam jim and rice bran to a tiny collection of tables is a very long way away from the traditional timeworn Thai scene in the UK, where pad thais and green curries are dished up on a table featuring a golden statuette of Buddha from Dunelm. That said, the place is also a long way from that purposefully edgy UK-Thai cooking I've suffered at many a hip British Bangkok-led establishment, always with an English chef and where the dishes turn up as and when, with each one hotter, grittier, twiggier and less moreish than the last. The Humphreys' restaurant, on the other hand, is authentic, boundary-pushing, a little odd – and also makes perfect sense. Smoked mackerel with jet-black charred skin comes on a salad of fresh grapefruit and ginger, followed by a nam tok salad that's heavy with thick slices of salt-aged beef and comes with bone marrow aïoli. Bo serves us, taking delight in the fact that I've brought my brother for his birthday and he's ready to eat. She's keen we try the battered pickled onion rings with curry salt and the grilled chicken skewers made heavenly with milk caramel. Artichoke and golden beetroot massaman curry – heavy on the cardamom, cinnamon and star anise – is a highlight for me, and comes with decadently good chicken-fat rice, while the roast pork belly phat phet with rhubarb stir-fry is also a huge hit. We order steamed broccoli with funky, fermented yellow beans to hit our vitamin quota, and pick our way through a papaya salad made more meaningful by the addition of shrimp floss. This is a cracking little progressive, family-run place that has hit the ground running and will no doubt soon be one of Manchester's hottest dining tickets. It has a small menu that has totted up many air miles in its making, and a big, generous heart. That evening's menu was the first to feature a Bangkok Diners Club dessert in the shape of an ice lolly-shaped mass of rice ice-cream with a Jackson Pollock-esque topping of zinging fruit sauces. Simple, fun and just enough to send us off out into Saturday night Manchester with a spring in our step and deep intentions to come back. When so many far-afield cuisines collide, I don't usually expect the middle ground to be some battered pickled onion rings, but this is Manchester, and that's bizarrely, beautifully fitting. Bangkok Diners Club The Edinburgh Castle, Blossom Street, Manchester M4, 0161-414 0004. Open lunch Fri & Sat, noon-3pm; dinner Tues-Sat, 5-9.30pm. From about £35 a head à la carte, plus drinks and service
Telegraph
25-06-2025
- General
- Telegraph
Prawn, cucumber and radish salad with sanbaizu vinegar
This dish involves a fusion of Japanese and Chinese elements. Sanbaizu (available from is Japanese, a slightly sweet vinegar that is made with dried bonito (fish) flakes, giving it an umami edge. It's good used with a plain bit of fish, too. You could replace the prawns here with raw chopped tuna, or fried squid or scallops. You can add other elements too – avocado, for example, or more crispy vegetables. The dried seaweed provides little salty, crispy bits and enhances the flavour of the prawns, but leave it out if you don't like it. Ingredients ½ cucumber 2 tsp caster sugar 3 tsp light soy sauce 6 tbsp sanbaizu 130g radishes, cut into matchsticks 1 tbsp dried wakame seaweed (optional) 85g podded edamame 165g-200g raw king prawns (if buying from a supermarket, you might see packs of either weight) 1 tbsp groundnut oil 1 garlic clove, grated to a purée ½cm-thick slice of ginger root, peeled and grated to a purée ½ red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped A few micro leaves such as cress, to serve (optional) Handful of fresh coriander leaves, to serve Sesame seeds, to serve (optional) Jasmine rice or sushi rice, to serve
