Kisume Chef's Table

9.75/10 on Thursday 20 December 2018. 

THE SCENE

The Walrus:  On the top floor of the Kisume restaurant complex where the wine bar is, the back rooms are where the Chef’s Table dining experience is located as a 12 seat horseshoe style table. The space is well laid out with an odd sprinkling of Japanese soft bondage porn pictures around the walls which I’m guessing is to get you in the mood for…food? Odd, but nice and all of a sudden, I’m hungry. 9/10

The Carpenter: I couldn’t have said it better myself. 9/10

POTATIONS

W: The Chablis bar is a great space to relax and select from some very nice wines. We forego our usual Martin Miller martini and go local (thematically speaking) with a Japanese gin…Roku I think. It works very well in a martini and the dinner is off to a great start. 10/10

C: Yes, a Roku gin martini. Fantastic Japanese gin. 10/10

DEGUSTATION

W: There is only one menu on offer, a 19 course Omakase designed by Shinya Nakano. What occurs over the next few hours is really quite amazing. Dish after dish of mainly sushi style courses keep hitting the table from the chef working at the center of the show. The stand out dish is the grilled/seared wagyu beef. It was a great menu with some truly exceptional dishes. We were drinking chardonnay by the glass (I think) but they must have just rounded in and charged by the bottle once we hit the critical number (which was nice of them). 10/10

C: While the Walrus went with Chardonnay, I elected to go on a flavor rollercoaster of Saki - five different saki over the course of the evening. Some extremely savory, all chosen by our slightly edgy server (straight off the bondage pages of the wall art) and great matches for the food. There was a lot of theater to the dishes. A drip fed arrangement using reverse osmosis for one of the broths. Some outstanding knife work. Alot of bowing, eye contact and human exchange on each dish presentation. The desserts impressed with a strong male and female genitalia theme to the last two dishes of the evening. More of a degustation menu than a pure sushi menu - a worthy contrast to minimishima. The entire experience was outstanding - there’d be more detail if the review had been written in reasonable time. 10/10

SERVICE

W: Excellent service. Staff were fantastic and the whole experience was top shelf.  10/10

C: Excellent. edgy. theatrical. They missed the left handed trick that Minimishima picked up on. 9.75/10

OVERALL

W: Exceptional effort by the Kisume team. I highly recommend the Chef’s Table experience for anyone looking for both quality and something a little different .  9.5/10

C: This was a sensational evening - a great setting and true pleasure to watch a real artist at work. Chef’s table is definitely the way to go. 9.75/10