Raw Appeal

Whatever. In the discreet lighting of a wood-and-tatami restaurant, a chef grilling bamboo skewers of leek and chicken gizzards, prawns and peppers over aromatic charcoal, such quibbles cease to matter. The bottomline and a very healthy bottomline it is too is that Japanese restaurants are here to stay.

Delhi, thanks to its constant flow of expats, boasts four exclusively Japanese restaurants. Mumbai, never too late in waking up to a trend, has three new South East Asian restaurants offering a tantalising taste of Japanese, and, as gossip has it, the first fine-dining experience on the anvil in Nikhil Chib8217;s Busaba.

Because of this huge lacuna, true-blue Mumbaiites make a beeline for the very posh Sakura at Hotel Metropolitan Nikko whenever they are in Delhi. 8216;8216;Farhan Akhtar, Tina Ambani, Shyam Benegal, the entire Kapoor khandaan, 80 per cent of the designers8230;8217;8217; brand manager Silky Sehgal stops to take a breath while listing her clientele.

Benegal loves it enough to recreate it at home. 8216;8216;My wife and I often try our hands at Japanese cuisine with the tempura doughs, wasabi pastes and sushi rice I pick up while travelling,8217;8217; he says. His favourites: the breakfast items, heavy on fish and meat pickles and 8220;the Sumo wrestlers8217; meal: a cauldron of mixed stock8217;8217;.

Designer Sonam Dubal8217;s fondness for the cuisine has much to do with his respect for the Japanese aesthetic. 8216;8216;It8217;s novel, it8217;s simple, it8217;s healthy,8217;8217; says the Delhi-based Dubal. 8216;8216;It8217;s chic and sophisticated, like the best designs to emerge from that country.8217;8217;

Much of the snob value of Japanese food lies in the fact that it is very much an acquired taste. Actor Ritesh Deshmukh remembers swearing off sushi after first tasting it at Tao, on New York8217;s 54th Street. 8216;8216;But some cajoling from friends and a few more trips saw me turn into a sushi fanatic,8217;8217; he laughs. In Mumbai, Deshmukh satiates his cravings at the tepanyaki grill at Spices, JW Marriott, and Vikrant Chougule8217;s Mimosa, August Kranti Marg, both of which also serve Japanese.

Part of the reason why India8217;s most cosmopolitan city doesn8217;t yet boast of an exclusively Japanese restaurant could be that while Delhi always had its expat Japanese population8212;unofficial estimates put the figure at 700-1,000 families8212;to fall back on, the Mumbai restaurants had to do the hard work of educating its clientele. 8216;8216;Sushi is not only raw seafood,8217;8217; points out Farrokh Khambata of Joss, a South East Asian restaurant that serves Japanese. 8216;8216;We offer sushi with cucumber, avocados, mushrooms and nuts, too.8217;8217; So much so that he sells 80-90 platters of sushi a day. At Spices, sushi now accounts for almost half its sales, up from 23 per cent six months ago.

Familiar ground for Enoki, the all-Japanese restaurant at the Grand, New Delhi. 8216;8216;It8217;s the most favoured in our hotel,8217;8217; says Ritu Dhawan, manager, PR. 8216;8216;We do at least two covers every night, partly because the Japanese start their dinner by 6.30 pm, and Indians stroll in around 10. Our turnover has increased by 40 per cent from last year.8217;8217;

All of which spells very healthy pickings for the restaurants, since no one would call the cuisine cheap. Sakura, which imports all crockery, artefacts and ingredients except veggies from Japan, prices its seven course Kaiseki meals at around Rs 1,300; a sushi platter could go up to Rs 5,000. And a 20-course meal? Well, the restaurant can8217;t even name a figure for the cost.

Adding to the costs is the fact that expert chefs or sushi masters are hard to come by. 8216;8216;Either you do it correctly or you don8217;t,8217;8217; says Chib, whose Busaba serves tempura, but no sushi. Chougule had a sushi master train his executive chef Chi Lee An, while Khambata himself underwent a rigorous sushi course in Singapore before launching Joss.

But the costs aren8217;t stopping the A-listers from laying it out at parties and even wedding functions. 8216;8216;It sends the bill spiralling, but makes a statement,8217;8217; says Dhawan. So, sushis and tempuras were the rage at Vijay Mallya8217;s much-talked-about new year bash, Busaba8217;s second anniversary party, Natasha Nanda8217;s Diwali do, and That 8217;70s Party at the Marriott on New Year8217;s Eve.

The trend has also started percolating into the smaller towns. Pune8217;s Le Meridien, which burnt its hand while experimenting with Japanese cuisine four years ago, struck gold with a sushi festival a few months ago. 8216;8216;Awareness levels have improved,8217;8217; says Chef Mitra of the hotel.

The Taj Blue Diamond does Japanese on demand. And Silk Route, an oriental restaurant scheduled to launch at Koregaon Park next month, is planning to introduce a live Tepanyaki counter alongside Korean, Indonesian and Vietnamese cuisines.

Truly, the world on a platter.

With inputs from Kalyani Chandorkar in Pune