Girls Night In Great Service

The first year after I realised how much JC like Japanese food, I proposed that we celebrate her birthday at the little Japanese restaurant I had spotted on Market Lane one day after gawking at Flower Drum.

This proposal did not get realised until this year, when we finally booked into Shoya for her thirtieth.

First thing I realised was that this is not a little restaurant at all.  Six levels in all, this is very much the kind of restaurant where you have to work out the type of Japanese food  you want before you open the door.  The kitchen is located on the ground floor, and everyone who works there bows to everyone who does not work there.  Seriously.  I wonder how the people in the semi-open kitchen get a chance to work, considering that they stop to bow every time a customer walks by.

After having worked through the degustation menu options (seven to choose from including a gluten-free option and a vegetarian option) and the BBQ option (two to choose from, minimum two people, with minimal smoke stench) online for the day, we opted to stick to tradition and simply choose from the a la carte menu.   The sake menu beckoned but the Japanese-themed cocktail menu got our vote.  Yum.


The price range of dishes in the dinner menu vary wildly, so it is advisable to order when totally sober to ensure that you are ordering according to your real appetite (you know what I am talking about - there is visual appetite, and then there is real appetite, the one that actually belongs to your stomach).  The service in this place is impeccable, and there was real effort to make sure we did not feel silly whenever we asked for an interpretation or a size estimate of what we wanted to order.  The waiter was even nice enough to imply ever so subtly that perhaps we were ordering too much.

Nama Shii Hotate - excuse lighting

The rest of the night, I must admit, is quite the blur of giggles, laughter, conversation, "umms" and "yuums" while our be-socked feet dangled happily under our table and our outside shoes sat hidden next to the restaurant-provided restaurant slippers. I do recall the sashimi moriawase as our entree platter, and Shoya's signature dish known as the Nama Shii Hotate, which is mashed scallops surrounding a quail egg that is topped with a whole shiitake mushroom.  I find it difficult to even describe this dish, so fulfilling it was (with a smattering of green tea salt) that we actually forgot what else we ordered after almost groaning over this We-Will-Eat-This-Again-In-A-Heartbeat dish - no talking please, this dish deserves our full and undivided attention.



In our (sober and excited) moment of "let's try something new today" bravery we decided to try the beef spinach souffle.  This is effectively ox tongue simmered with wine and sake before rolled with spinach souffle.  Were it not for our education with Iron Chef Sakai on the idea of Japanese-French fusion, we probably would not have attempted this dish at all.   Not a bad course, though the textures of soft savoury souffle against melt-in-your-mouth braised meat was rather curious and initially disconcerting.  I am still not sure we should have tried this in a Japanese restaurant.



We originally wanted to try all four flavours of onigiri on offer but we were strongly (yet still subtly) advised agains this.  When the sour plum onigiri and spicy onigiri came, I realised we had just ordered the onigiri from Manga land, the rice ball that you see school children in movies/TV sitcoms/documentaries about Japan eating during recess time, the size that you thought you would never see outside Japan because it just looks so...big.   So much sushi rice, and then the seemingly small yet concentrated portion of the-other-ingredient right in the middle of the triangle. In this case, I needed both my hands to hold this to my mouth to make me feel like I was not being the rice equivalent of Augustus Gloop.

Again, excuse lighting - in my excitement I had only carried my phone camera which found the restaurant lighting so challenging it just decided to turn everything yellow.

A few minutes after I ate half my onigiri and decided I needed to rest on my seat pillows, the miso soup (traditionally served at the end of a meal) came.  The Kani Cheese Miso to be exact.

Crab.  Cheese.  Miso. This, miso lovers, is what a REAL miso soup should be about. All hail the Shoya chef that dreamt up this concoction.  I think there was probably more than a bottle of sake involved in the dream, but nonetheless this worked so very well.  Amidst the slurping, shell cracking, finger licking and sipping, we voted this the best value for money miso soup ever.  Another We-Will-Eat-This-Again-In-A-Heartbeat dish.  Even if we were struggling with the rice weight of the onigiri fully hitting in our bellies in the meantime.

After that miso soup, I am afraid dessert absolutely paled in comparison.  The kurogoma panna cotta had less complexity than I expected, considering the blend of black sesame, soy bean and green tea powder.  JC went all out and ordered the Sea Urchin Cheese Cake.  We were actually disappointed that it tasted like a good cheese cake with the taste of sea urchin so subtle it took a lot of concentration to detect it.

Food - 4 out of 5.  There are dishes that you find in normal Japanese restaurants, there are dishes that you find in fine dining restaurants, and then there are the dishes you can only find from a brilliant chef.  I still dream of that miso soup.  Really must try all the other dishes with crab and/or scampi  without going broke, somehow...

Service - 4.5 out of 5.  Initially it was a little slow but things picked up once there were more than just our table on the floor.  They are very honest about serving sizes and taste profiles of the dishes, which is really a good thing. Professional, well trained, and will crack a smile even if your joke is not so funny.

Atmosphere - 4 out of 5.  As usual we dined early in comparison to other diners, and booking in advance meant that we had a little section all to ourselves and so for about 40 minutes we felt as if we had booked the whole floor.  The silence then was wonderful, so pity about the music they decided to play later on when the crowds were in.  Love the traditional dining arrangements and slippers.


Value for money - 4 out of 5.  Servings can be generous, but you do have to think hard before paying to try some of the very authentic dishes such as the tuna toro, the chawan mushi and the fish heads.