Basho

Japanese

After dining at Atlantica, portions here seemed excessively large…they weren’t, but it’s all relative. The evening at one of St. John’s’ top dining locations started with an ample amuse-bouche of chunks of Atlantic salmon deep-fried and then marinated in a dashi, soy and onion sauce, paired with miso soup. This proved to be much more than a nibble to start the meal. Atlantica would have called this a $12 appetizer. The miso soup was even very good, levels above the overly-salty versions you can find at most generic sushi restaurants. It certainly set the tone for the high-quality meal to come.

Cocktails are the fashion of the day here. The day’s special was a watermelon martini with “muddled” watermelon. Muddling is very chic right now, but basically just means “sort of crushed” using a kind of pestle, and more often applies to herbs than to fruit, like the fresh mint in a well-made mojito. When the cocktail list is as a long or longer than the wine list and the wines have only names and not years, you know the restaurant is trying to be hip. At least, not stuffy. The corresponding food is fun and innovative. There are also a few sakes (good sake being hard to come by in St. John’s), but the two options by the glass were not of interest. The Hakutsuru draft sake is fine, but nothing special, and the unfiltered nigori is sweet and simple, but again, nothing special. A 300mL bottle of the menu’s only Junmai-type sake at $45 is probably your best option. When St. John’s develops a clientele for good sake, perhaps this list will grow.

So I was completely confused about what to drink. Sweet cocktails aren’t exactly known for their pairing well with lamb…Fine, my companion got a glass of red, a Cuvi Tempranillo, so I’ll go for a “Mikan” martini – sake and gin with white cranberry, grapefruit and lemon juice with muddled orange. I was expecting refreshing citrus, but I got “Sex on the Beach” sweet.

On to the food. Sure you can get sushi here, but sushi is more like Japanese snack food. I love high quality fish, simply placed on perfectly-made sushi rice, but that’s an experience to have when you go to a sushi bar, sit in front of the chef and ask what’s fresh today. Or you can order the Sushi “Toby” Omakase here at Basho for $44 and have a similar, but not the same, experience. Besides, I’ve had good sushi before. What I hadn’t had was amazing Cantonese-style lobster in black bean sauce.
Served as an appetizer for two, or a main for one, this whole crustacean got coated in Japanese bread crumbs, deep-fried and then slathered in the best black bean sauce I’ve ever tasted. The fermented beans were perfectly sweet and sour, chewy and thick. The ribbons of green onions for garnish made the plate explode with colour. Someone in the kitchen was kept busy that night with making sure all the meat in the lobster was easily accessible, the claws and tail somehow already opened but left filled with their heavenly meat. Minimal lobster shucking utensils were required, and the dish wasn’t even embarrassingly messy thanks in large part to the finger bowls of lemon water to clean the remnants of the sweet sauce off the fingers. I wouldn’t want to eat it on a first date, though, unless the date loved it as much as I did and could forgive the necessary but generally unattractive breaking of shells, sucking of meat and licking of the sauce off both the lobster and your fingers.
This is the only restaurant I’ve seen scallop sashimi in St. John’s. Seared, often, but raw, rarely. The earthy flavour of the raw mollusk is a delicacy, and the Chef at Basho knew exactly what to do with it. Thinly sliced it was spread around a light pile of shredded deep-fried potato. The bland potato didn’t add anything to the flavour palette of the dish, or even work particularly well with the scallops, but it made for an attractive presentation. Each individual slice of sashimi was topped with a piece of raw ginger and a piece of scallion as well as toasted sesame seeds and a sesame soy sauce with a touch of citrus. The lemon made the dish more like a ceviche where the acid is used to quickly marinate the fish, but it was not so overpowering as to cover the delicate flavour of the scallops.The same sort of sauce was poured into the shucked oysters, presented on the half shell on beds of rock salt. The slice of ginger and scallion appeared again, but the oyster’s own liqueur revolutionized the sauce. The visual of the sesame oil droplets remaining separate from the soy and liqueur in each shell was also beautiful.

A simple organic greens salad with seared salmon and the house soy dressing was light and refreshing. The dressing was very salty and enveloped to the point of almost overwhelming the greens, but it worked very well with the lightly seared salmon that had been seasoned only with salt and pepper. The generous slices of thick fish were more than satisfying.

Sure, I’ve seen a bigger rack of lamb before, but the Chef Tak Ishiwata has a way with anything that gets coated in Panko. These Japanese breadcrumbs generally lead to a dish being cooked so that every bite sucks in oil and flavour and lets the juices of the meat win out.

The sauce on the Muscovy duck breast is intense. Red wine combines with soy sauce and grapes for an incredible sweet and salty rendition of the classic red wine reduction. It helps that the duck is cooked medium-rare to medium, according to your tastes, so you don’t end up chewing over-cooked meat long after the joy of the grape sauce has left your mouth. The slices are thick, so it may take you awhile to chew your way through this course anyway.

Other options included Atlantic cod with a cilantro aioli, a type of mayonnaise, and the closest thing to buttery heaven on the menu is an appetizer of sea bass with vermicelli and a sweet miso sauce. The butter sauce gives the impression of the high-end Japanese restaurant staple, black cod that is usually unavailable in Newfoundland.

Dessert options are full of French influence, from chocolate mousses and cakes, to lighter sorbets. If you still have a sweet tooth, there’s always the rest of the cocktail menu to peruse, and there’s a cool bar upstairs where you can pose for the rest of the evening.

Hours: Tues-Sat 5pm-close
Expect to Pay: $50-$90 per person, including an appetizer, entrée, glass of wine, tax and tip

(709) 576-4600