Shin Kushiya (VivoCity)

My foie gras craving hit again, and I needed to return Lynn her truffle salt (which I had carefully weighed out exactly half for myself). She suggested Shin Kushiya for their foie gras kushiyaki. Sounds awesome, and it seems to match the truffle salt...

First round of orders were all kushiyakis. The foie gras with caramelized apples came first. Slightly crispy on the outside, so soft and melty inside, and oh-so-blissfully yummilicious. The truffle flavor got lost in the sweet teriyaki sauce so we didn't go too much in that direction. Two generous pieces of liver for about $10. We were carefully savoring every morsel of it. Every thing else came in a single platter. We ordered chicken balls, stuffed shitake mushrooms, Ton Toro (pork neck), pork belly, asparagus wrapped in thinly sliced beef, premium beef, and mozzarella wrapped in thinly sliced pork. The chicken balls were aromatic, and mushrooms were good. Pork neck had a lot of tendon in it that I couldn't chew through and didn't care too much for. The pork belly was a little tough too. Asparagus was horribly tough, too 'old'. I couldn't even bite through the stem. We couldn't taste the cheese in the the mozzerella wrap. The highlight of this platter? The premium beef. It was fantastically enhanced by our truffle salt, so we had that blissful silence for a little bit. (This 'blissful' description is coming up quite a bit, but we've somehow started describing our food that way... can't find a better way to represent our feelings at that point of time.)

Second round of order included a garlic fried rice, pumpkin salad, fried octopus and squid in batter, and grilled onigiri (triangular rice ball) with bonito flakes. The garlic rice was really good - fragrant, with each rice grain separately well from the next, but still sticky the way Japanese rice is. The pumpkin salad was nice, but nothing spectacular. In fact, we found they used potatoes to bulk up the salad before added pumpkin to the top, so there wasn't a lot of pumpkin. The fried octopus and squid was quite heavily battered and a little too oily. Though the seafood were fresh, I couldn't quite tell which were the octopus and which the squid. The onigiri was almost forgettable, until we realized it's blandness went well with our truffle salt.

Grilled foie gras with caramelized apples

All our kushiyaki - (from left) stuffed mushroom, chicken ball, pork neck, pork belly, pork with mozzarella, prime beef, asparagus with beef

Garlic rice

Roasted pumpkin salad

Fried octopus and squid

Grilled onigiri with bonito flakes

I think I had better kushiyaki at a Japanese restaurant at Cuppage, I can't remember its name offhand. Except for the foie gras of course, that was the utmost highlight of this meal. The premium beef kushiyaki too. I can come back just for these two items. We actually saw wafu steak and beef katsu (beef cutlet) on their menu. Those looked tempting, but we weren't sure of the quality of Japanese steaks. I mean, yes, some of the best meats comes from Japan, but we're not sure the chef is eloquent at cooking steaks. Badly done steaks will be a damper, no? But the beef katsu sure looked interesting, and we may try it the next time, given the premium beef kushiyaki was so good.