JJ IN DA HOUSE: Omakase Dining @ 绊 Kizuna, Penang Times Square

Little do we all know that 绊 Kizuna Japanese restaurant is one of the best Japanese restaurants in Penang. Comparing its quality of food, ambience, services and price, 绊 Kizuna definitely worth every ringgit you spend at the restaurant.

绊 Kizuna opened their second outlet in Times Square Penang and it is also listed as the biggest Japanese Restaurant. It has taken over the previous restaurant 野 Yea and the place been renovated to become a much more gorgeous restaurant. We were told that the owner spent a lot of money in this outlet just to change it to a more decent restaurant.

This restaurant is beautifully decorated with numerous items imported from Japan that sure brings back memories if you have been to Japan. You will feel a warmth welcome by all their service staff the moment you step into the restaurant just like how polite the Japanese are.

I've visited their very first outlet which was located at Bay Avenue near Queensbay, the food was really good with affordable menu and variety of choices, which justified why the outlet was pretty popular for lunch. That restaurant was much smaller than this, this place could definitely fit up to 1000 as it has 2 floors and the restaurant is really huge! They also have VIP rooms that can host big groups or small groups. It could be an ideal locations for companies who are looking for a venue to host their events too.

Anyway, I had the greatest Japanese style dining ever at 绊 Kizuna recently, Omakase.

What is Omakase?

It is defined as "I'll leave it to you", which diners will leave the choices of dishes and ingredients to the chef, let the chef lead them to enjoy all the best they could prepare for the diners.

Which means you do not get to choose what you eat, but you will be asked for your special diets or personal preferences and let the chefs surprise you with the best dishes they could offer.

Simple yet elegant table setting.

We were also served with this specially ordered Maxwell Sparkling Mead to go with our dining. This wine was specially and carefully selected by the chef that it is best to go with their Japanese food specially crafted by the chef. We were told that they are the only one that sells this wine so you can't find it anywhere else in Penang. It is priced at RM88 per bottle and I can guarantee you that it is worth for that price!

It was pretty refreshing with the Japanese cucumber and the lime that has added some twist to the wine itself. pretty smooth and blended well with the meal too.

Omakase is a very extraordinary dining experience and 绊 Kizuna is the only restaurant in Penang that is doing this. By ordering the Omakase meal, you are basically hiring your personal chef to serve you for the entire night. Every single dishes will be presented live to enhance the dining experience and you will get to see every single details and efforts paid by the chef on the food.

It would be best if you have time as this special dining experience may take up to 3 - 4 hours. If you were to make booking, 绊 Kizuna will serve Omakase in between 6pm to 8pm only, if you come later than that, the restaurant will not be able to serve you.

Have you ever seen a fresh Wasabi? They only use this for their Omakase dining and not those ready made Wasabi. Everything will be grinded in front of you. Also you will be asked about your special dietary or your personal preferences too.

Chef in action! Carefully putting all the selected fresh ingredients together to form a delicious dish!

For starter, we tried this Kuroma Ebi Salsa

Tiger prawn, ikura, salsa sauce

This is a good starter as we all know that salsa sauce is kind playful in taste and it is very refreshing. The tiger prawn used were very generous in size, every bite was chewy and tender. The sweetness from the salmon roe just popped into your mouth and blended well with everything else.

We were presented to this very lovely piece of toro belly. From the texture you can tell that this piece of tuna belly is gonna bring you to heaven!

Everything is slowly and carefully prepared by the chef.

Our second appetizer is Maguro Otoro Tu Caviar

caviar, toto belly, tobiko

A specially crafted dish were presented in front of us. We were so amazed by the generocity by the restaurant to present such a high class dish for us. Omakase will definitely worth the price you pay for it as everything were carefully selected and specially crafted for you.

One spoonful of caviar, tobiko and toro belly is simply smooth, delicious and mind blowing. The fats in the toro belly is so creamy and blended well together with the tobiko and caviar. The lemon set at the bottom of this dish also gave it a hint of refreshing taste while keeping the tastiness of this dish.

Chef Kevin in action! Carefully preparing our next course.

The last appetizer was this perfect looking Salmon Avocado Tu Caviar

salmon chunk, caviar, avocado, raw japanese cucumber, radish & caviar oil

All the ingredients were put together to form this marvellous starter. The moment you chew on the salmon trunk and the caviar popped out on your mouth, together with the fragrant of that caviar oil made everything tasted so well and mind blowing.

Then we moved on to all the fresh sashimi. All were sliced and presented live by the chef to us. From there we can see the skills and techniques of the chef preparing every single dishes.

Sake Toro (salmon belly)

Pretty smooth and great to taste, the layer of fat just melted in your mouth and even better to finish it with a sip of Maxwell Sparkling Mead.

Aka Ebi is naturally red in colour even in the sea, even without cooking it would look great in its nature colour. Serving it as sashimi shows how great the chef is in selecting ingredients.

We were taught how to savour this delicious prawn sashimi by the chef and the best part would be the head and the prawn paste is a bomb!

Hamachi is a very common fish on the sashimi fish. The key to a great piece of Hamachi sashimi is a great judgement by the chef while selecting the fish. The chef in 绊 Kizuna is definitely experienced enough to serve this thick piece of Hamachi that was smooth and on point.

Maguro is my favourite sashimi among all. What I like is the layering of the Maguro itself and the texture of that could let you taste the freshness in the flesh. I like how this big piece of Maguro were presented and every layer just melted in my mouth.

Many couldn't really accept Hokkigai, a type of shell fish that commonly used as sushi topping. But what they didn't know is Hokkigai is actually a rather premium ingredient in Japanese food as it must be fresh and well handled to taste great.

I really like the chewy and tender flesh of Hokkigai and it went well with some sauce applied by the chef. Perfect without the need of soy sauce too!

A less favourable sushi would be the Ika Sushi that most people do not like the squid raw. From preparing Ika sushi, it shows how skillful a chef is in delivering the food and handling this thin ingredient especially on the cutting skill. We had a lovely piece of Ika sushi here and everybite was just chewy and smooth.

Next we were presented with 2 very generous size of Hotate (fresh scallop)

They were made into sushi and the chef burn the surface to make it fragrant and taste greater.

Hotate sushi is presented in a very generous portion that sure worth what you paying for Omakase. The flesh was quite tender and every bite was full of the freshness from scallop. You would be very happy and satisfy with the ingredients provided by Kizuna.

After some cold food, we moved on to some heart warming food and we started with some Kisu Tempura that was thinly coasted with the tempura powder. They were crispy and served hot with a bowl of tempura sauce. I was really happy to see this as tempura is also one of my favourite Japanese food. Have to say that it is really good especially the fish served was really fresh!

Also we were served with Unagi Mushimono, a type of soup with some glass noodle, tofu and a large piece of Unagi. The soup was slowly boiled to perfection and it tasted great. Only it was a little bit to the salty side to me.

Look at the size of that piece of Unagi! I can guarantee you won't regret for your decision.

Last but not least, we were served Foie Gras to end our lovely meal. That piece of foie gras was just generous enough for one person and it was presented with chips and some thinly sliced onions. I never thought that they all could blend well when you eat it together and Kizuna just made this dish rather special by combining them.

To end our lovely meal, we were served with this plate of beautifully looking dessert that I was looking forward to try since long long time ago.

This dessert is called Warabi Mochi 水玄信饼 or people just gave it a nick as Raindrop 雨滴.

I saw this dessert on the website since a while ago and I have always wonder how it taste and now I finally get to taste it. I was really happy to see how it was presented and it was like a jelly kind of texture, you can still try to shake it and see how it bounce on the plate, pretty fun I shall say.
绊 Kizuna uses crushed peanuts and brown sugar. They blended well together and I like to chew it together with some crunchy crushed peanuts and finished it off with the smooth and slight sweet brown sugar. Just perfect!
á la carte option is also available on the menu, so if you want to try this delicious treat in Penang, now you know where to find them!

A lovely dinner with Chloe from www.applefish.net at 绊 Kizuna

Here's Kevin, the person-in-charge of 绊 Kizuna that is very knowledgable and experienced in Japanese dining, and also Chef Kenny Yeoh, who has 27years of experiences in Japanese cuisine, he also worked in Japan for a few years and now he is back in Penang as an Executive Chef in 绊 Kizuna.

Through Omakase, I've learned a lot from Kevin and Chef Kenny. I am really grateful to be here and glad to have them as our personal chefs. We enjoyed the night and had a great dinner here with their company and personally seen all their professions in serving great Japanese cuisine.