Last Saturday, CityBeat attended the soft launch of Suzu, a new Japanese restaurant that opens today at Madison Square from Makoto Okuwa of “Iron Chef” fame. It sits next to fellow celebrity chef Fabio Viviani’s Italian restaurant Zingaro, at 5392 Medpace Way.
If the full menu matches up with what was available on Saturday, I’d go so far as to say this is Madisonville’s best new restaurant.
We started off the evening by sampling several appetizers, like a one-bite portion of tuna, yuzu kosho and gochujang aioli enveloped in a crispy rice crust with masago roe on top, or a pork belly skewer glazed with a miso-based aioli. Every starter I had was great, but the true standout was the Kurobuta gyoza filled with housemade shiitake XO and miso mustard, which I initially thought would be the best thing I had all night.
As time progressed, my group ate more and more. A dish of young chicken marinated in amazake, a traditional Japanese fermented rice drink; a sample of one of the restaurant’s steaks with chives and wasabi; a ginormous “dynamite hand roll,” which featured baked crab wrapped in soy paper and was my coworker Ethan’s personal favorite of the night; some sort of chocolate sponge cake glazed with ganache, topped off with a chocolate coin. All of the above had me going back for seconds (or thirds), provided I was able to cut through the crowd.
The drinks were great, too. The staff was handing out free Midori sours, but I opted to order the restaurant’s take on a Manhattan, which adds Japanese whisky to the cocktail’s traditional formula — adding a smooth, airy touch to the drink’s usual bold flavor. We also tried five different sakes, all of which were winners, although my favorite was an unfiltered Junmai Ginjo sake fermented with soft water from the Hiroshima region.
And then came the showstopper: the sushi. While we did enjoy three excellent sushi rolls alongside a small portion of hamachi, remember the bluefin tuna that Okuwa spent all that time chopping up on camera?
We sampled it in all sorts of ways — several different cuts of the fish were offered as nigiri, and more still were presented as sashimi. It’s the same sort of experience you’ll get at Suzuné, the 12-seat Edo-style omakase counter inside the restaurant. I’d say what I tried near the end of the night was almost on the level of downtown omakase restaurant Roji, which I consider Cincinnati’s sushi gold standard.
Sure, you could argue that your average customer isn’t going to get a personal slice of sashimi from Okuwa himself, or suggest that I may have eventually been won over by the pomp and circumstance of the whole evening. I didn’t get to experience the restaurant’s private tea room, nor was I able to try the entire menu. But everything I ate across the night was better than anything else I’ve ever experienced in the neighborhood. Sometimes food speaks for itself.
Suzu opens Oct. 13 at 5392 Medpace Way in Madisonville. For more information, visit the restaurant’s official website.
