Tanuki Raw

Rating: 3.75/5
Destination: Orchard Central, 181 Orchard Road, #02-03 

Comments: A moderate size shop with an Al fresco balcony. They adopt the open kitchen concept which makes it slightly different from most restaurants. To be able to enjoy the food and the view of the chefs cooking is another form of pleasure. I’ll be talking about some of the dishes.

Foie Gras Unagi

Ingredients are rice, unagi, foie gras, pickles, onsen egg and mixed rice. Well charred and delicious unagi served on top together with its foie gras. The unagi and foie gras are so good and full of umami, super satisfying. The sauce of the unagi has covered both the unagi and the rice but it didn’t sip into the inner part of the rice. The onsen egg is gooey, mixing them together with the rice and the sauce deepens the taste of the sauce, acting as a great flavor enhancer to the dish. Pickles are there to cleanse your palate in case the foie gras is too rich for you to withstand as it is one fatty foie gras. One downfall of the dish is the mixed rice, it’s just plain Japanese rice with sesame. People would say that it’s normal for the rice to be plain as there are sauce on the above to compensate for it but to me, rice is as important as the other ingredients. The rice must have a certain flavor to have the ability to stimulate the appetite of the consumer and even have the ability to diminish the greasy taste of the foie gras. In this dish, it’s as though the greatness of the other ingredients had to compensate for the plain Japanese rice.

Foie Gras Truffle Yakiniku

Ingredients are US black angus short rib and onsen egg seasoned with truffle soy sauce, foie gras and black garlic brown butter over the mixed rice. The flavor of this dish is slightly weird due to the truffle soy sauce. Truffle tends to have an overwhelming smell and taste that are can cover the taste of different ingredients and that is what it did here. The combination of the truffle soy sauce and the yakiniku feels like a mismatch to me. The yakiniku lost part of its beef taste and the rice has this heavy truffle soy sauce taste that somehow killed the appetite. Together with the foie gras, it made this dish a very heavy dish to consume.

Even though there are downfalls for certain dishes, the quality of the preparation of the ingredients are top notch. That explains why I’ve gave it 3.75 as rating. There are still their fresh raw oyster or their Chirashi Don that includes salmon, tuna, striped jack, ikura and scallop.

Price ranges from >$20++