Tuesday, June 1, 2010

EN Japanese Brasserie - Still Solid

Our home girl Charissa was in town and as usual she was craving some Asian food, so I figured with Lan sadly gone, the next best place would be EN Japanese Brasserie. EN puts out some solid dishes, but it's in a kinda crappy location - not near any trains and I'm not down with any of the bars in the area. But, after my first visit in a long time, the food was so good I may have to come back soon.

Our Menu
Fresh Yuba Sashimi **
delicate tofu skin served with ponzu citrus soy
Fresh tofu skin had such a phenomenal soft milky texture that was balanced by the salty sour ponzu dressing. Really great stuff.

Uni Tamago Dofu ***
egg custard in dashi topped with sea urchin
The first WTF dish and like the dish before it was a perfect balance of textures and flavors. The sweet uni played off the richness and sweetness of the fluffy egg custard. Add the rich/sweet dahsi broth and this was flavor overload.

Sato-imo Croquette *
taro root & iwa-nori seaweed croquette
Nice and crispy croquette without being overly oily like a lot of tempura joints in the city. Filling was very fluffy and flavorful.

Sea Bass Kara-Age **
sake-marinated medallions lightly fried
Had this before and like the croquettes, these were fried perfectly without masking the flavor of the fish. Pretty awesome stuff.

Saikyo Miso Black Cod *
black cod marinated in saikyo miso, grilled
You can find this dish probably in any Japanese restaurant in America now. This was good, but not great. The miso was not overpowering like at some places, but the fish here should have been more tender and buttery. But, still a good dish nonetheless...sadly, Lan always knocked this dish out of the park.

Sautéed Duck Breast **
with grated daikon in ponzu citrus soy
Nicely cooked duck that is covered in grated daikon in ponzu dressing. The greated daikon with ponzu was so intense, but unfortunately the duck should have been a wee bit juicier in my opinion. With that being said, I still ordered some white rice to eat with the fun daikon ponzu topping.

En Garlic Shiso Fried Rice **
Don't know why, but I really loved this dish at the end. It was perfectly cooked rice with a nice garlic flavor balanced all throughout the dish. The three of us were killing this dish and we wanted more!

Chocolate Cake and Green Tea Ice Cream
Decent, but don't know if I would necessarily recommend this. The cake was a bit too eggy for me, but the green tea ice cream was out of control good. Save your money and hit up L'Arte nearby instead.

Rating System
--- What the F - in a bad way * Good ** Great *** What the F – in a good way


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