Ever since I came across the concept of omakase from my favourite food blog of all time I’ve been dying to try it out.  So what’s omakase exactly?  To sum things up its a Japanese term that simply means “It’s up to you” as in you’re telling the chef to serve you according to what he thinks is best.  The assumption here is that the chef will try to impress you with his culinary skills and serve you the freshest/best ingredients that the restaurant has to offer.  Kinda exciting, isn’t it?.

Prices vary from restaurant to restaurant (obviously) but you can expect to spend RM200 to RM300 per person for omakase.  While it certainly isn’t cheap it’s probably cheaper than ordering all the items you are served ala-carte.  Plus you don’t have to fuss over what’s good in the restaurant.  If there’s anyone who knows it would be the chef, right?

I didn’t quite know where to go for omakase so I followed masak-masak’s recommendation and went to this Japanese restaurant located within Federal Hotel.

Kapoh Muneharu (used to be Sushi Dokoro Maeshima under a different chef/owner)

It was a Saturday night and the place was quite empty.  Throughout the night including our table, probably no more than 4 tables were occupied.  However I think we were the only local patrons there that night.  The others were Japanese which is a vote of confidence for this place.

Tatami room (well not really tatami)

Since I had made a reservation we were seated in a 2 table tatami room with those funny sunk tables so that you can pretend you’re sitting on the floor like in a Japanese home I guess.  The room was decent and clean.  We were seated and then given a menu (which was hand written and had pictures manually glued onto them! lol).  I asked the Chinese waitress what’s on the menu for omakase… she didn’t seem to understand what I wanted so I didn’t bother to pursue.  I left it to lady luck to see what we’ll be getting.

First up was the gorgeous starter.  On the plate were baby squids, hiyayakko (cold) tofu and some fried fish.  As a fan of sotong in general I loved the squids.

Next was a delectable selection of sashimi (raw fish slices).  Can’t say I know what I ate at all but they were fresh and tasty.

Complimentary Potato Salad for Kit Yi.  We ate some and it was actually quite nice 🙂

Chawanmushi (steamed eggs).  Strangely this dish is served cold, usually they are served warm straight out from the steamer.  That orange looking pile on top is uni (sea urchin) roe.

From the never ever tried something like this before books.  That ball there is actually made out of mashed lotus root.  That little bit of gravy there is most likely made of some fermented bean sauce.  This was quite an excellent dish.

Grilled beef done right.  The beef was well cooked and juicy.  They are dabbled in a dash of sweet teriyaki sauce to enhance its flavour.

Managed to sneak a picture of the Japanese chef hard at work.

A selection of sushi and miso soup.  The one in the middle is obviously not fish.  Looks like pork but didn’t matter what it was really as long as it tasted great.

Wrapped up with some Matcha (green tea) ice cream.  I think this dish was obviously made in house.  It didn’t taste like any of the usual green tea ice cream you can buy in stores.

The total damage that night was RM 460 for 2 pax.  If you ask me whether it was worth it well I have mixed feelings about that.  The quality of the food we were served that night was obviously good.  However it doesn’t seem like a lot of food for RM 230 per person 🙂  I must say I was left feeling a little unsatisfied.