O Ya

[justom]

firstfrost and I explored O Ya on Thursday. We had the full-menu omekase, or chef's tasting menu, which had the following seventeen courses:

1. Kumamoto Oyster, with watermelon pearls, cucumber mignonette
2. Hamachi nigiri, with spicy banana pepper mousse and truffle oil
3. Salmon Tataki nigiri, with torched tomato, smoked salt, onion aioli
4. Warm Eel

Comments

[rifmeister]

Did you have to take notes as you went, or did they bring you a list?

[firstfrost]

They let us keep a menu, which we made a few notes on (Tom added "truffle oil" to one of them that the menu didn't mention, and I added "non-poisonous!" to the sea urchin, which he has neglected to transcribe.

(I had had sea urchin exactly once before, and that time was not a good experience.)

[marcusmarcusrc]

Yeah. My one experience with sea urchin was perhaps the most distasteful food experience I've ever had. I hear that it is either "really good" or "really bad" but the "really bad" was so bad that I'd be hesitant to try it again, even at a top-notch restaurant...

[kirisutogomen]

If it helps to have more data, I've eaten sea urchin roe many times at many places and never had any bad. There are also more gradations of quality, although they might pale to insignificance once you've had a 'really bad'

[marcusmarcusrc]

17 courses? Madness!!!

[firstfrost]

Note that for most of them, a course was a piece of sushi each (or something about that size). So, that's less than three orders of maki at a normal place. :)

[chanaleh]

Wow, 12/17 that (it sounds like) I could have eaten. That's an impressively high ratio. :-)

Thanks for posting this!

[kirisutogomen]

Some of those descriptions need parenthesization. Like "torched tomato, smoked salt, onion aioli". That could be 'torched ((tomato, (smoked salt), onion) aioli)' or '(torched tomato), ((smoked (salt, onion)) aioli)' or (((torched tomato), (smoked salt), onion) aioli)' or '(torched (tomato, smoked salt)), (onion aioli)' or....

Most restaurants don't need much clarification, but a place that makes potato chip sushi might want to err on the side of clarity. :-)

[justom]

Pretty much all the descriptive adjectives only bound to the nearest noun. =)
Torched tomato; smoked salt; onion aioli. You know, the way you're supposed to interpret English if you're not thinking too hard about it. ;)

[jofish22]

This sounds totally awesome. I'm intrigued that they threw the ballotine in there along with all this nigiri and the like. What did you drink with all this?

[firstfrost]

The ballotine was tasty, but reminded me too much of a piece of General Gau's Chicken for me to treat it with proper reverence. :)

We just had water - my lack of confidence when presented with a wine list pales in comparison to my lack of confidence for a sake list!