Mitsui Japanese Cuisine 三井日本料理 @ Taipei (2012)

These were some of the first photos I took at Mitsui back in 2012. That year, I put on a lot of weight.

Mitsui is a premium Japanese restaurant that has its own importer of Japanese seafood. It has expanded over the years to branch out to casual dining, sushi restaurant and Japanese supermarket, but its forte is deeply rooted to its omakase origins.

1/ Appetiser & 2/ Sashimi Course

There were two courses served together. Firstly, the appetiser consisting of ankimo (monkfish liver) in ponzu sauce with grated radish and chives. Delicious, tangy and definitely prepared your palate for the rest of the dinner. There’s also a Hokkaido oyster with Japanese dressing.

And then a wide selection of sashimi that included chutoro (medium fatty tuna belly), botanebi (botan prawn), aji (yellowtail), uni (sea urchin), ikura (marinated salmon roe) and akagai (ark shell). And reminding us that we are in Taiwan, there’s a slice of beautifully grilled salted mullet roe called 乌鱼子 in Chinese or karasumi in Japanese.

3/ Salad Course

There are two choices for salad – lobster or abalone. You will given half a serving of poached rock lobster together with a Japanese salad.

You may call me boring, but when you saw the tank full of swimming live rock lobsters while walking in to your table, you will know what you want for dinner.

4/ Kani Course

One of the attraction of Mitsui was their live tank of snow crab, and so in their omakase, you will be served same crab unless you specifically asked not to include it in the menu. Then you will be given an abalone instead. You can have it steamed or grilled.

I prefer them grilled. The crab became sweeter in my opinion after they were grilled.

5/ Grilled Course

Each diner got a half a side of the Japanese tai grilled simply with salt. The sweetness of the fish carried the dish, and the skin has been grilled to perfection.

6/ Main (Nabe) Course

There’s always a hotpot as the main course. Not my favourite course, we usually changed it to something else in later visits.

7/ Sushi Course

The sushi course was three pieces of select nigiri sushi each – unagi, maguro, uni.

The eel had been drizzled with the familiar sweet grilled unagi sauce. The eel definitely was not from the mass produced unagi packaging as you can taste the freshness of ala minute grilling.

As this was not the top priced omakase, you get the regular tuna sushi and not the fatty tuna belly. However, it was still a very good tuna sushi as the maguro has been marinated in the soy sauce which enhanced the sweetness of the fish in a surprising way that you would not get from the fresh tuna.

Of course, it is still a very decadent omakase. They threw in a Bafun uni gunkan, which was really nice.

The raw materials were so fresh that I ordered a repeat of the sea urchin as hand rolls.

8/ Dessert Course

And the dessert is always a serving of fruits and a red bean soup. I skipped the coconut cream that they usually put on the red bean soup.

*/ Tenzaru Soba

Princess was still very young then, so she could not appreciate a full omakase. So we ordered a tenzaru soba set for her. It was a premium tempura prawn because huge tiger prawns were used. I am so glad that she can now handle a full course on her own.

It is always fun to sit at the counter and watch the sushi chefs went about their business. But an omakase meal is not just about sushi, so after a while the space at the counter is really limiting the spread of the courses. So unless you are ordering ala carte sushi and sashimi, I would recommend you to be seated at the regular tables or one of those private rooms available. Reservation recommended.

Mitsui Japanese Cuisine 三井懷石料理
No.30, Nong-an Street, Taipei City
Tel: 02-25943394

Date Visited : Dec 2012