Ancient wisdom — across civilisations and cultures — holds that the exuberance of Youth must be tempered by the wisdom of Age. As Wasabi by Morimoto, the award-winning Japanese fine-dining restaurant at The Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi, turned a zestful five recently, Grandmaster Chef Hemant Oberoi, fresh from having handcrafted a six-course menu for the birthday party, weighed in with his decades-long experience of serving as God’s gift to the gastric juices.
Wasabi today has a reinvented, born-again menu, elements from which Oberoi and his kitchen orchestra showcased with symphonic splendour. We savoured a spectacularly presented aperitif named Shiroaisu — that’s shochu (a distilled barley beverage with 25 per cent alcohol by volume) and lychee juice served with the smoke-and-mirror effect of dry ice. The maestro then led us through the starters and odoburu (hors d’oeuvres) — salmon wara tataki, a delectable sushi and sashimi platter, and a crispy onion cup with morel sauce. For the main course, we had a ‘ghost’ tenderloin sukiyaki, served on a bed of volcanic rock that’s a thousand years old. The meat comes on a bed of candyfloss, which upon contact with the garlic soy sauce, vapourises like an ancestral ghost. A sakura strawberry ice cream rounded off the divine repast.
The sense of grand theatre at Wasabi, crafted by famed British interior designer Theo Nicolaou, is enhanced by the dramatic mood lighting, accentuated by the decorative flute glass chandeliers. The sushi and teppanyaki bars, where showmen chefs display their skills, are a veritable stage set. And the diners here are patrons of more than one fine art. The rejuvenated Wasabi today offers a feast for every sense.