Winnipeg Free Press: March 04, 2011
By Marion Warhaft

The art of sushi

Superstar chef Makoto Ono is back at Edohei and he's creating masterpieces for the eye as well as the tongue

WITH a new sushi restaurant popping up almost every week, on almost every corner, you need a reason for choosing one over the other. And there’s one heck of a good reason for making it Edohei. Yes, I know it’s been around for years, but it has always been one of the best. It’s the place, in fact, where many local sushi chefs trained under the father of them all — sushi master Sadao Ono.

Sadao Ono is still there, but so, these days, is his most illustrious trainee -- his real-life son and Winnipeg's own culinary superstar, Makoto Ono. A few years ago Makoto put Gluttons on the map, and was later crowned gold medalist at the 2006 Golden Plates Canadian Culinary Championship, outclassing celebrity chefs from points east and west.

He has since operated restaurants in Beijing and Hong Kong (and still has toes in two Hong Kong restaurants) but expects to be here for a year, at least. Possibly longer. In the meantime, he has returned to his cooking roots, but creating inventive new twists on Japanese classics.

There are several ways to orchestrate a meal here. You can order familiar foods from the regular menu, and you should. Nigiri sushi are $2 to $3 a piece, with rolls from $5.50 to $13 -- a tad higher than some others, but so is the quality. The simple nigiri sushi are a perfect balance of moist, flavourful rice topped by dewy slices of sweet-fleshed fish. Or you can have the eponymous Edohei roll, which combines assorted fish with tobiko roe, avocado and cucumber ($10). And shrimp tempura don't come any better than these plump, juicy ones in ethereally lacy and utterly greaseless batter ($9.50).

Alternately, you can add a few of the above to a number of Makoto's daily specials, which are characterized by clean, fresh flavours and anastonishing attention to detail (most $5 to $14). My first mouthful among them was the mind-blowing mushroom soup -- a dairy-less but substantial purée with the earthy flavour of several different kinds of mushrooms, floating a myriad of tiny enokis, and garnished on the side with tempura fried criminis, which were lovely on their own and even better after a dip in the soup.

The first fish dish that night was near-see-through slices of flounder, decorated with little swirls of daikon, moistened by a clear vinagrette of puréed Japanese plum and crunchy with the occasional grain of maldon sea salt. It was exquisite. In fact, exquisite was a word that kept coming to mind for such other stunners as cubes of red tuna with seaweed in soy and sesame-seasoned vinegar; snapper carpaccio with slivers of apple and a dijon-spiked, citrusy ponzu; and horse mackerel tataki with ginger and scallions -- my least favourite dish, actually, but only, because mackerel is my least favourite fish.

On other nights the featured specials might include cured salmon with cucumber in a soy and saki-seasoned shiso crème fraiche; a caesar salad garnished with torched red tuna; snapper or hamachi with grapefruit segments and shaved fennel in a ginger emulsion.

For a truly special treat, put yourself in Makoto's hands and opt for an omakase tasting menu. It will vary in price, usually from $60 to $75, depending on the number of courses and kinds of ingredients, and should be ordered two days in advance. Then be prepared for course after little course of whatever ingredients he thinks are best on that particular day.

Our $75 dinner started with four amuse bouches. The first was tuna tartare topped by crunchy orange roe in a light, clear dashi sauce, followed by salmon lomi lomi with bits of tomato and cilantro, and then little tempura of flounder with shiso greens. The most astonishing of them, possibly, was the hamachi cubes with cucumber under a ball of shaved wasabi flavoured ice -- a little wasabi goes a long way with me, but I could have gone on eating that one forever, and then lapped it up as it melted.

But those were just the mini-starters. Dinner proper started with a kind of cole slaw topped by minimal shavings of foie gras in a plum wine gastrique, and was followed by scallops seared to the precise second in a clear mushroom-dashi broth, and then by nigiri sushi of albacore, salmon and flounder and two maki sushi of barbecued eel, avocado and strips of omelette.

The meal progressed in degrees of richness, culminating in moist, fabulously flavourful pan-roasted quail brushed with a film of citrus-miso sauce and garnished with strips of eggplant and fennell. The finale was a velvety panna cotta in a gossamer green tea sauce, topped by little red beans.

The wine list is short, and mostly Canadian, but there are eight sakes to choose from, and an assortment of Japanese beers. Service is impeccable, and the setting is serene and charming, with typically Japanese sleek lines and polished blonde woods accented by a stunning ceiling of back-lit glass panels, a huge Hiroshige on one wall, and attractive artifacts on others.

There are areas where you can eat in traditional, shoeless fashion, but if you choose a conventional table and chairs you'll be very comfortable.

Edohei is open for dinner only at present, from Wednesday to Sunday, but will be open for lunch as well in a few weeks.