Speaking of makimono, Ting San has trained his staff to roll them thinner and has developed several new combinations. “The Maki” ($23) most resembles the old ones from Chestnut Hill, with eight pieces filled with toro and pickle, topped with a spicy red sauce and microtome slice of jalapeño for kick. Kobe beef with red-wine-poached pear ($30) is another astonishing combination. The beef is rolled around rice and vegetable, and topped with a perfect cube of pear and a micro chive. Each bite features flavors of crunchy fruit and tender beef in an eternal yin-yang of flavor and texture. A maki of seared hamachi and sudachi limes ($23) allowed us to focus on the tart flavor of Japanese limes, intense in flavor rather than acidity.
Oishii has a menu of “entrées,” from which we ordered pan-seared halibut ($32). It came on a large plate, vertical in that a nice piece of halibut was mounted on a raft of grilled asparagus with a thin potato-lace fried wafer. Since that’s really not enough starch, it came with a teacup of sticky, fragrant Japanese rice.
Oishii has a lengthy list of domestic and imported sake, but I went for the regular wine list. Although it starts at $30 and climbs rapidly, it’s well selected for the food, with a lot of Pacific Northwest wines that seem made for fusion dishes. However, you needn’t go higher than the 2005 Hope verdelho from Australia ($30), a dry but fruity Iberian grape, with enough spice to match sushi and almost enough acidity to cut it. Oishii will also let you bring your own wine and will serve it for a corkage fee.
Oishii doesn’t feature many desserts, but there are at least two good ones. The menu warns you to order the molten chocolate cake ($15) 12 minutes ahead — actually, it would be more like 15 — and it’s worth it; the result is a cup of perfect fallen chocolate cake. Green-tea tiramisu ($8) is a spin on Japan’s favorite western dessert, with the whipped cream dyed a pale green and served over only a few ladyfingers.
Service is important at a restaurant like Oishii, which nods to European conventions of a three- and four-course meal. Here, the servers lived up to expectations. We put our waitress to the test with a random and enormous order, which she and the kitchen juggled into a splendid sequential banquet, well timed and dramatic. She knew everything on the long menu, and pronounced the Japanese almost flawlessly and the Iberian-grape name like a native of Portugal.
There are only two problems with Oishii. In order to finance your dinner, you should set a budget and eat fewer things, as the Japanese do. You will be just as impressed, and perhaps better able to concentrate on each bite. As for the music, I’m not recommending Japanese classical music, which would be a cliché. But a guest who recently visited Japan suggested jazz, which he heard in several restaurants there: Coltrane, Billie Holiday, and other masterpieces. Alternate suggestion: Yo-Yo Ma’s settings of French modern classical music.
Oishii Boston, 1166 Washington Street, Boston | Open Tues-Sat, 5 pm–Midnight; and Sun, 5–10 pm | AE, MC, VI | Full bar (and own wines with corkage fee) | Valet parking | Sidewalk-level access to most tables | 617.482.8868
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Robert Nadeau: RobtNadeau@aol.com.
