santaro@hinoki, china square central.

i've walked past this place countless times, even browsed the menu, but never been tempted enough to step in. that day, i was however lured in by the lunch sets that they were offering. the lunch sets should be relatively new as i don't recall ever seeing them offering that.

of course, the one i was tempted by was the signature bara chirashi set ($16.80), inclusive of salad, soup and an appetiser. given the price and the fact that i spied what looked like seaweed salad in a corner of the picture, i wasn't expecting an exceptional chirashi.

i was right- it came with both seaweed and jellyfish salad. i've never had any of these in a chirashi before- most of the time they come as sides, so i was quite taken aback.

the bowl was gorgeously presented though, with what looked like a mountain of sashimi cubes.




unfortunately, it looked a lot better than it tasted. the dice on the sashimi was too fine to actually discern its taste, so it made for a pretty meh chirashi. in fact, the seaweed salad and jellyfish salad were the tastiest components. the rice was meh as well- didn't even taste like japanese rice. i left most of the rice untouched.





santaro@hinoki
china square central #01-50/53
http://www.epicurean.com.sg/hinoki.html