Food review: Sushi Jin

SINGAPORE — The elegant Japanese restaurant, Sushi Jin, is owned by the Les Amis Group and hidden away in the plush yet forlorn confines of One Farrer Hotel & Spa, and hardly anyone talks about it. Yet its 14-seat sushi counter and compact dining room are never empty.

Those who know about this six-month-old gem quietly rave about its modest pricing for a menu that’s worthy of more than a few stars. Head chef Raymond Tan turns out some exceptional grub, including an appetiser of tai (sea bream) carpaccio (S$32) seasoned with a slightly sweet truffle sauce and minced kelp and chives, as well as an impressive Wagyu don (Japanese beef rice bowl, S$35) topped with an onsen egg.

Those familiar with the canon of Singapore-bred Japanese chefs might find these dishes reflective of Tan’s work history. Having cut his teeth in a restaurant called Wasyoku in Tokyo’s Aoyama district, where he learnt to slice sushi and fry food at the age of 21, Tan returned to Singapore to work in establishments such as Akanoya Robatayaki, Kinki and Fat Cow.

Most of his preparations at Sushi Jin are classic and simple, though he tends to veer towards modernity with the use of truffles in a few dishes.

Thankfully, Tan balances the fungus’s pungent, earthy flavour well, never allowing it to overwhelm the rest of the ingredients. Often, the black truffles are minced into a sauce that is lightly seasoned with mirin, which gently lifts and complements the dishes they are added to.

In fact, balance of flavours is precisely what makes the food here remarkable, as Tan deftly creates sushi with ingredients like a sweet prawn dressed in crab yolk sauce and served with the prawn’s head deep-fried to a shattering crisp, and foie gras with sea urchin that are both rich yet light and melt deliciously in the mouth. (Both came as part of the S$80 sushi assortment for two.)

Most of the time, the dining room is full but quiet, with patrons tucking into excellent value-for-money set lunch rice bowls like the Hokkaido don (S$38), chock full of sea urchin, scallops and salmon roe over fabulously seasoned rice, and bara chirashi don (S$32) with generous cubes of fresh sashimi. Plenty of cheaper set lunch options abound, including a katsu don (breaded pork loin rice) for S$20 and a spicy salmon don for S$22. They all come with a salad, soup and dessert.

At lunch, the omakase menus start from S$80 for an appetiser, sashimi, two cooked dishes, soup and dessert, and run up to S$130 to include several more courses. At dinner, only the S$130 option is available — and it is a steal compared to the S$200-and-above omakase menus at other restaurants of similar ilk. ANNETTE TAN

Sushi Jin

Where: One Farrer Hotel & Spa, 1 Farrer Park Station Road, #01-011/12 Owen Link. Telephone: 6443 3378. Opening hours: Daily noon to 2.30pm, 6.30pm to 10.30pm