Contemporary Japanese Cuisine at 0.5°

When the city's Japanese restaurants are close to coming to an excessive level, and the food are more or less the same everywhere, people would start looking for restaurants where something different, or something a little more special, could be experienced.

Tai Han is always a neighborhood for experiencing. As suggested by its name, 0.5°Japanese Contemporary Cuisine + Bar is an izakaya restaurant that serves contemporary Japanese cuisines.

It has awing interior designs, thick hemp ropes, instead of paint or wallpapers, were hung to decorate the ceiling and walls, oval stones were placed in the hand wash basin where I felt guilty running water through (don't ask me why :P), and the dim lighting all came together to create the ambiance of its own. I believe its Japanese yen priced menu (1HKD=10¥) was intented to part of the design too!

 

 

Naming itself "contemporary", it sets certain expectations for customers to anticipate special details in each dish regardless of the seemingly ordinary names. Here are some which really did impress me and my friend :)

Sweet shrimp tartar 甜蝦他他

The presentation looked fun! - a bamboo steam basket arrived at our table, the server opened it to reveal some purple chips (purple sweet potato chips) and a glass egg, I am sure at that moment we looked so confused you would laugh at our faces :D when we saw the shrimp tartar inside the eggshell, we were even more confused, how were we supposed to eat? I guess the server was used to being asked this question a thousand times and must have been cursing the creator silently haha - but easy on this, here is the demonstration-

The shrimp tartar with fish roes mixed in was seasoned right to bring out the natural fresh taste of the seafood. Despite the cotton-like texture of the tartar, chunks of shrimp meat could still be enjoyed accompanied by crispy salted sweet potato chips in beautiful purple color.

Wagyu Konbu maki 炭燒布包和牛

I'd rather say it's a painting than a dish. The stone slate was layered with black squid ink bread crumbs resembling soil, and flower petals were pitifully scattered around rolls of mundane wagyu flesh...I am not an art person but I had a feeling this dish was inspired by art pieces of Vincent van Gogh's or some other impressionist masters'. The slow cooked wagyu beef tasted very nice in terms of the meat itself, the balanced taste of the fat which seemed to be totally absorbed back by the meat and the seasoning. The 'konbu' rice paper wrapping the wagyu was just right in thickness that managed to balance the overwhelming taste of the meat.

Deep fries lotus root slices and minced chicken 炸蓮藕片免治雞肉

This supposedly simple snack was surprisingly successful in winning my heart. Maybe it's the creative combination of these two matching ingredients that impressed, lovely!

0.5° Style paella

The contemporary touch of this dish was a Spanish seafood paella served in a hot stone bowl, fair enough? But that wasn't the point, haha! The highlight of this paella was the rice, which was cooked with lobster broth and it was super yummy. My friend and I were full but we insisted in finishing it till the bottom.

There are so many more items on the menu we wanted to try, yes next time. To enjoy the most out of trying new restaurants with special concepts, there is a golden rule I'd suggest following -Don't walk in with too high expectations, let the surprises surprise you - it's sometimes better to just be happy fools than serious nerds :) cheers

0.5°Japanese Contemporary Cuisine + Bar

Address: Shop B, G/F, 12-13 Shepherd Street

Tel: 2504 2777

Yokozuna vs Shugetsu - A Japanese Ramen Battle

Yokozuna Ramen Restaurant in Yau Ma Tei is famous for its red cherry shrimp ramen, marinated soft-boiled eggs, and pan-fried pork belly. As it's even better-known for its constant long queue, I've been discouraged many times to try. Thanks to my friends, I finally got to get in after an hour and a half of waiting (by them) on a Friday night.

Shugetsu, the rival ramen shop in this battle, is located in Sheung Wan, which is an overseas branch of its original shop in Japan’s Ehime prefecture. As introduced in my previous post, Shugetsu - Ramen full of love, it is famous for its homemade thick soba, and the broth made of a  special savory soy sauce from Ehime.

Here is the battle, I am going to compare 3 signature dishes from both with a 5* rating scale (the more * the better of coz). Since I haven't decided to write this post during my visits to the two stores, some pictures are missing. Anyway, hope you could imagine by the words.

Round 1 - Ramen
Yokozuna Ramen (miso base): ** The soup was light and ordinary, none of the ingredient stood out. The soba was okay but not too impressive, a bit too soft though.

Shugetsu Ramen (intense soy broth): *** I liked the broth, though it was a bit too oily, the bamboo shoot and the spring onion were loud on top of the already strong taste of the soy sauce broth. Good? can't really say. Bad? not at all. The soba was ideally chewy without being too thick/thin.

Round 2 - Tsukemen (Dipping noodles) 
Yokozuna: *** The soul of this dish - the dipping broth lacked character, it tasted nice but seemed missing something. The clear broth adding to the dipping broth suggested a taste of water with unintended seaweed flavor. The highlight was the pan-fried pork belly though, which was well flavored and tender.

Shugetsu: **** The soup, its signature soy sauce based broth was too much on the oily side, but I appreciated the taste of the sauce and it's added with vinegar, marinated bamboo shoots and spring onion, which made the dip such a bomb. I still think its taste was too strong but it's yummy as a dip for the perfect thick soba. The downside was the pity amount of kurobuta pork belly soaked in the broth that made it even saltier. There's a lovely clear chicken broth to add to the dipping soup after you finish the soba, I'd suggest you take the chicken broth by itself, or add the dipping soup in the chicken broth instead of vice versa.

Round 3 - Marinated soft-boiled egg
Yokozuna: ***** Need to order separately. It's claimed to be germ-less and more importantly it tasted good! The yolk was in perfect equilibrium between the liquid and solid state, nice!
Shugetsu: ***** Comes with the ramen. The egg well absorbed the tasty soy sauce during the marination, delicious! The only thing was the slight over-cooking, pity

Personally, I prefer Shugetsu better. For those who pursue excitement and details in the taste, I think Shugetsu outdoes Yokozuna in this way. Though both are good ramen restaurants in Hong Kong for a reason and it would be great if restaurants and food vendors take an effort to listen to customers' opinions and advance or maintain high standards.

Shugetsu - Ramen full of love

Shugetsu's homemade ramen noodles are full of love, from ingredients to the perfectly served tsukemen, from production to service, you could feel Shugetsu's pride and insistence in bringing out the best of its ramen. Servers are highly attentive and informative, really impressive to have such service in HK, even during the regular business lunch hour :)

Shugetsu
Address: G/F, 5 Gough Street, Central
Tel: 2850 6009
URL: www.shugetsu.com.hk