Nanbantei Japanese Restaurant @ Far East Plaza

Located at Level 5 of Far East Plaza and can be seen immediately if you're coming up via the escalator. Made reservations a day before.

start-up kit, salt and miso on the right

table seats

We got the counter seats, and has a clear view of the grill and the two chefs.

grilling away~

Ordered up a feast, and while waiting for the food to arrive, we sipped on our tea served in a nondescript black cup.

to clean our fingers before the meal

otoshi of yasai sticks (@$2++ per pax)

My friend loves garlic fried rice, and so we had to order one here. Plus she said she was starving!

garlic fried rice (@$5++)

Hmm, the garlic fried rice here tasted heavily of pepper, so it wasn't the version that we're hoping for. Perhaps we should stick to yakitori instead.

First up, salmon belly or sake harasu (@$7++ per stick).

salmon belly with huge mound of radish

Very nice smokey flavour but surprisingly, it was pretty lean for a salmon belly.

nanbanyaki (@$8.50++ for 2 sticks)

Next up, we had the nanbanyaki or beef with bean paste sauce. Chewy and done medium well. Wonder if we can have it medium rare? Forgot to ask as we were too busy chatting.

Had a bit of trouble identifying the next stick as the chef would just place the plates at the space infront of us quietly.

hatsu (@$4.60++)

It took a few seconds more before we realised that we were about to eat the chicken hearts. Hahaha! Flavourful and has a good texture. More please!

Think we made an effort to get one item out of each yakitori meat section! Tried beef, lamb, pork, chicken and seafood.

butabara yuzukosho (@$7++ for 2 sticks)

The butabara was strongly flavoured and goes well with beer. The meat was a little tough though.

gyu yaki (@$14++ for 2 sticks)

The gyu yaki or wagyu beef steak was less chewy than the nanbanyaki but still not as tender as hoped for. Go for this if you like beef with alot of bite.

The lamb yaki or lamb chop, was recommended by my friend. It is a must-eat item for her, everytime she visits this place.

lamb yaki (@$13++ per stick)

The lamb was nicely tender, and has a good lamb flavour. Not overly gamey. Liked the charred oily bits in them. Has a tad more salt on it as compared to the rest of the sticks that we had.

By right, that was the end of our meal, but no... A small whole fish was being grilled so nicely infront of us, and hence, we had to enquire about it. Turned out to be aji shioyaki or grilled horse mackerel with salt. So we busted our budget and ordered that to try.

aji shioyaki (@$25++)

yummy sweet flesh

The sight of the skewered fish being grilled somehow reminded me of Japan hour where fish gets grilled over the hearth.

The fish was nicely salted and its flesh fresh and sweet. Cooked over the fire at just about the right amount of time and achieved a nice texture. However, this mackerel has a lot of small sharp bones so had to eat this slowly and carefully.

For 'desserts', we ordered the sweet corn. How can we not? The whole stack of bright yellowish golden corn on cobs (and it looked as if, they'd be sweeeet) were staring right at us, in our face.

grilled sweet corn (@$7++), buttered and salted

golden bits

Food here is definitely pricey. But it was fun watching our food getting cooked right infront of our eyes, as well as taking a peek at what others were eating. Though we sat indoors with the open grill, the food scent was pleasant and it doesn't stick to our clothes that much by the end of our meal.

Service was alright although it took some effort to get the staff's attention to have our tea refilled.

This meal costs about $114 for two pax.