Food Review: Bowled Over

Like in origami, dishes at this new Japanese restaurant fold flavours into their artful menu

Japanese spread at Yum Yum Cha. (Source: Express Photo by Tashi Tobgyal)

Sheathed in white, and ornamented with a rainbow of origami all over the space, Yum Yum Cha elicits a response from the diner akin to what Hello Kitty does to its cult of adherents; there’s an “aww” hovering over the entire space. The younger sibling of the revered Yum Yum Tree, Cha sits on the second floor of Saket’s Select City Walk.

The menu is as animated (literally) as the space housing it, with illustrations in pop colours visually deconstructing the various dishes. It hovers mainly around Japan, though it does on occasion amble towards other Asian provinces, ranging from dim sums to sushi (a Yum Yum Tree standby) and a mosaic of dishes in between. Each table is armed with a slew of sauces and a mixing bowl for each diner to create their own dip, an activity which keeps us happily engaged, like a toddler with jangling keys.

Sauce set, we decide to begin with the Chicken Sui Mai and the Crispy Prawn Cheung Fun, and at the fervent behest of the smiling staff, a platter of sushi rolls. The Sui Mai comes first — the delicate, desiccated chicken seems coy in translucent wonton sheets but is wanton in flavouring, flecked with bruised basil and chillies. Think of it as a culinary dance of the seven veils. The cheung fun, or more prosaically, rice noodle rolls, swims in next, and like a potential love interest in a rom-com is soft on the outside but with plenty of bite on the inside. Doused in our piquant potion, it transfigures into a far more adult genre.

The sushi come in a riot of flavours and fillings. If the Volcano roll comes piled high and filled with tuna, scallops, cucumber and spicy mayo, topped off with tobiko (Flying Fish roe) to stimulate the lava, the Dynamite is (despite its name) a more chilled out affair with its cast of salmon and prawn tempura. The seafood is so fresh that one can imagine it having starred in a Discovery Channel marine life special just before its delicious demise and subsequent descent into our abyss.

For the main event we go with a Classic Octopus Takoyaki (a Japanese subtype of dumplings) and the Sizzling Sichuan Noodles with Chicken, Corn and Mushroom served in a stone bowl, perhaps the subject of the eatery’s tagline of “bowls full of happiness” (pictured). The noodles come first, in a glorious amalgamation of noodles, shitake, soft corn and well-seasoned chicken, which gently steams in its receptacle for the duration of the meal. The kedgree resonates with an inherent earthy smokiness, making it manna for winters, and every other season really. The octopus dumplings come in last, but are more than worth the wait, with a beguiling melding of textures. Served in a deep fryer wire rack, the dusky spheres are firm on the outside but when bitten into release a gush of liquefied seafood, subtle but full-bodied, with a surprise piece of tentacle, hidden like Cthulhu in the depths, completing the textural trifecta.

Stuffed to our gills (or gizzards, as you will), we still wade into dessert: the diabolically decadent Belgian Chocolate Cheesecake (insert paroxysms of pleasure here) and Mochi icecream. The latter, both celebrated for its deliciousness and notorious as a cause of death for Japan’s elderly (due to its sticky covering which has occasioned choking fits) comprises various flavours encased in an extremely glutinous sticky rice shell, is something we have been dying to sample, pun unfortunately intended. It belies any potential risk.

Meal for two: Rs 2,000 (including taxes, excluding alcohol)
Address: 2nd Floor, Select Citywalk Mall, Saket. Contact: 9810002994

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