Adding to Singapore’s growing list of impressive Japanese restaurants is Hazuki, the brainchild of the same people behind Sushi Masaaki and helmed by Chef Kenta Yamauchi. The chic restaurant is conveniently located in Ngee Ann City and focuses on Kyoto-style cuisine, which is characterized by fresh, seasonal ingredients that are simply cooked, but handled and presented in ways that allow its inherent elegance to shine through.
The reservation-only restaurant features five menus (three for lunch and two for dinner), ranging from $180-$380++. To fully immerse yourself in Chef Yamauchi’s creations, go for the full dinner menu, which is typically comprised of 10 items that boast the season’s best.
At the moment, Hazuki is blessed with a bounty of kegani (horsehair crab), which appears as an elegant starter with dashi jelly and oscietra caviar, and as a main – simply steamed to let its natural sweetness through – served alongside liver sauce and vinegar dipping sauce.
Shirako, another seasonal favorite, is also on the menu, and is lightly torched and paired with an umami-rich chawanmushi. Other seasonal ingredients are added in soups or fried as tempura, but keep an eye out for highlights like the A5 Wagyu Tenderloin with uni and finished with a generous shaving of black truffle, as well as the donabe, which features fragrant kinoko mushrooms and meaty slices of Japanese amberjack.