Inspired Western-Japanese

First published in Options, The Edge, 22 May 2016

Western-Japanese cuisine, rediscovered.

In a neighbourhood of coffee shops and car workshops, we walked upstairs into the unexpectedly sophisticated setting of Sion Dining.  A wine cellar and a long bar usher the way into the small darkened dining area, with ceiling to floor shimmering curtains, spotlights falling on tables with high-backed seating, and pictures of sultry Marilyn Monroe on the walls.  The mood is one of relaxed confidence.

The restaurant specializes in yoshoku cuisine, Japanese food inspired by Western cuisine. It arose in the mid-19^th century during the Meiji period in Japan.  While Japanese pasta and Hamburg steak are obviously Western inspired, what we often consider Japanese, such as tonkatsu and Japanese curry, are also part of yoshoku.

A glass window looks into the brightly-lit kitchen from the restaurant.  The chef, Masamichi Shiomi, is remarkably youthful-looking for someone who was the personal cook for the Japanese ambassadors to Papua New Guinea, Australia and Indonesia.  The menu is thick, with pictures and pithy quotes, but the affable restaurant manager, Seal, helped with recommendations.

Service was brisk with only 2 wait staff, who also make wine recommendations from the extensive collection. The Sion Salad (Rm28) was a thing of disheveled beauty, a tower of arranged leaves topped by flowers. Bacon slices, cherry tomato, grilled brinjal, kombu and garlic chips, combined with the intriguing dressing – light, salty, umami, – to make for a bright, memorable salad.

It was followed by Oyster Olive (Rm36), marinated oysters with black olives in oil. Simple but deeply fragrant, it paid tribute to the culinary skills of the kitchen, for the simplest dishes are the most difficult to execute with flourish and flair.  We paid tribute to it with pieces of bread soaked in the oil.  

No less striking was the Ebi Ajillo (Rm36), a tapas-inspiration of prawns and mushrooms cooked in sizzling olive oil and sprinkled with herbs for deeply-infused flavor, and more excuse to order more bread pieces.

Our first of the mains was a popular classic, Teppan Hamburger Steak (Rm38) with a ground meat patty sizzling in a hot plate. Glistening and lightly charred outside, it was juicy and tender within, collapsing easily under the knife, and infused with beefy, burly flavor throughout. Three sauce accompaniments – daikon in soy sauce, barbeque sauce and a demi-glace – provided for variations in enjoying the meat patty, with lightly grilled eryngii mushrooms by the side.

Further cementing the culinary excellence, the Ebi to Shoga (Rm32) was another simple concept, flawlessly carried through – satisfyingly dry, firm spaghetti, with fresh, bouncy prawns, the whole shot through with the exotic hint of ginger flavor, and sprinkled over with fresh herbs, making for a dish with delicate balance and nuance.

 The best was reserved for last. This was the Gyutan (tongue) stew (Rm82), a richly dark reddish-brown stew inhabited by dark islands of meat, topped with fresh herbs and a salutary section of potato. The dish requires 3 nights of painstaking stewing to soften the ox tongue.  The stew, thick with the scent of red wine, elicited unsolicited murmurs of appreciation with the first taste. Best appreciated with bread dipped in it, the rich stew was a complex blend of deeply-satisfying flavours best experienced for oneself. Some tastes simply transcend words.

The tongue meat was superb, tender yet substantial, breaking apart easily, its connective tissue reduced to a slight chewiness, and elevating this otherwise lowly meat to something akin to gourmet food.

As Seal had predicted, all the sauce was cleaned off with bread; not to do justice would have been almost criminal; it was that good.

The only desserts were imported ice creams from Japan (Rm13 a scoop) but the Goma (black sesame) and Macha (green tea) ice creams were excellent, rich and authentic in their raw appeal, coarse-textured but smooth-flavoured. 

Sion Dining is that most unusual of finds, for not often does one encounter a gem of sophisticated, polished culinary art in a narrow discipline, in this case, of yoshoku cuisine.  One might argue that a derived cuisine with a relatively young heritage should not be deserving of such an accolade, but the Japanese have a way of taking something foreign and making it uniquely their own with their cultural imprint.  And so it is here – if you’ve always thought of Western-inspired Japanese food as something with second-class citizenship status, come to this restaurant and have that perception set right.

Sion Dining and Bar,

B-1-16 Block B, Jalan PJU 1A/20A,

Dataran Ara Damansara,

47301 Petaling Jaya,

Selangor

Tel: 03-78400632

Business Hours: 6.30-11.30pm daily, closed on Sundays.