Unsung sushi at Ryujin

RESTAURANT REBRAND

Sushi Ryujin #01-19 Shaw Centre 1 Scotts Road Singapore 228208 Tel: 8028-1940 Open for lunch and dinner Mon to Sat: 12.15 to 2.30 pm; 6 to 10.45 pm

[SINGAPORE] If sushi restaurants had to take a personality test, Ryujin might score somewhere between an INFJ and ISTP on the introvert spectrum. It’s low-key, discreet, hushed even. And helmed by a chef who offers little by way of banter, theatrics or aspiring idol looks.

If you were president of The Anti-Social Association (SG chapter) and needed a venue for its annual dinner and dance, you’d be in the right place. Nobody would show up and you could sit in a corner and focus on what you really came here for: the sushi.

Sushi Ryujin, as it is known now, has had a couple of disposition changes over the years. It had a long history as Aoki, before morphing into Sushi Ryujiro for a short spell.

Now, as Ryujin, the Les Amis Group eatery has gone back to basics – with a sushi chef who knows his stuff, quality ingredients and a long-serving support team to take care of the rest.

Torii Ryosuke is no life of the party. He spent some years at Shoukouwa in the early 2020s and was in Tokyo before joining Ryujin, but he retains that endearing, self-effacing manner of a Japanese chef still adapting to a new environment. The kind who hasn’t yet adopted that savvy, tailored-for-Singaporeans chumminess that builds followings.

If anything, he applies that effort to his food, tweaking the menu to suit local tastebuds that prefer variety and less subtle flavours. It’s still Edomae at the core, but with some well-placed riffs. 

In a nod to the price-conscious, he squeezes in a lunch menu at S$188, a shade under the mental threshold of S$200. It’s perfectly adequate for a straightforward sushi lunch of 11 nigiri and a starter.

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If a personal treat is in order, the S$288 omakase offers four starters and eight nigiri. Dinner starts at this price, or you can go the full Monty with the S$388 chef’s special menu of six starters and 11 nigiri.

As it is with all Japanese restaurants, the price-quality ratio applies. But more expensive doesn’t necessarily mean better enjoyment. 

The S$288 set kicks off with appropriately pricey crab in a cold palate pleaser of refreshing dashi jelly with slippery junsai and okra slices. But it’s the S$188 menu’s ice-cold, chewy arrowroot somen in delicate broth, garnished with chrysanthemum leaves and a pile of crispy fried whitebait, that steals the show.

Seasonal ingredients dictate what you eat, naturally. The pricier menu continues with unremarkable grilled barracuda with sweet pickled ginger flower, followed by sashimi. Slices of fleshy grouper and smoky aburi amberjack pass muster, but it’s Torii’s homemade umami-packed seaweed paste that adds the X-factor.

The sashimi and the natural sweetness of blended corn topping a too-small teacup of chawanmushi tip the balance towards the S$288 menu. Sushi-wise, there’s a fair bit of overlap between the two menus, with a few fancier items such as murasaki uni justifying the larger spend.

Torii’s shari comes close to our personal preference – individual grains with a chewy bite that harmonise with the fish without either dominating the other.

Occasionally, it misses the mark when the rice is a little harder or not quite the right temperature. But when all the elements align, your Tokyo radar lights up.

It does so for medium fatty toro with the surprise addition of sweet pickle to temper the oiliness. So too for otoro done aburi-style – so creamy it practically dissolves into the rice.

Minced shiroika is so delicate it has to be served on your hand, and the Hokkaido murasaki has the kind of pedigree that warrants its credentials displayed beside it. 

The sushi line-up across both menus includes the usual suspects such as shima aji, sawara, crunchy tairagai, spring salmon and tachiuo.

While Torii is relatively new, the long-serving front-of-house and kitchen team plays a key, if largely invisible, role in the entire production.

That includes manager Amber, and the chefs behind not just every cooked dish but an excellent homemade gula melaka ice cream, lovingly made from the precious golden syrup hand-carried from Malaysia. Make sure you ask for it.

Sushi Ryujin may not be a trendy, celebrity chef-driven sushiya, but it’s dependable, unpretentious and real. And you don’t have to be an introvert to appreciate it.

Rating: 7