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A Japanese State Of Mind

By angela murrills, from straight.com - Best Eating

Publish Date: 20-Jan-2005

Black Tuna Touches On Both New York And Tokyo With Elegance And Smarts

Owner Jacob Jung displays Black Tuna?s spectacular Denman Street Roll. Phillip Chin photo.

Black Tuna, a smart new second-floor spot in a dream West End location, is not your usual sushi hangout in looks, or in what's on the menu. Owner and chef Jacob Jung calls his approach ”New York style Japanese“, and before horrendous visions of pastrami-maki flood your brain, his second definition, ”Japanese with French presentation“, ups the elegance quotient.

Originally from Korea but with Tokyo, New York, and Los Angeles all on his résumé, Jung could happily slot his new place in anywhere. Creating a little entrance area is an L-shaped miniature garden of tall bamboo, black pebbles, and a tiny fountain that leads you into the restaurant itself, a welcoming space with deep-red walls. Vertical and horizontal black posts create a room within a room for half the tables (which total around a dozen) and a sense of intimacy for those at the sushi bar. Decoration is uncluttered and offbeat: a tangle of tiny white lights high in the ceiling, like sparkly tumbleweed; an arrangement of coloured panels on the wall. It's elegant, but not to the point that you won't go there in your shorts in the summer, when this place will be one to bring visiting out-of-towners. (What you can't currently make out at night is the sweeping view of English Bay, and yes, there is a small patio. Book your seat now for the fireworks festival.)

If there's a unifying theme to Jung's menu, it's his creative use of sauces. ”Not soy with everything,“ he says in a follow-up phone interview. Wasabi yogurt tops a Philly Roll filled with cream cheese, crab meat, and avocado, and Thai peanut sauce accompanies rolled salmon and spicy scallop.

”What do you suggest?“ we ask our server, and along comes a Denman Street Roll. A spectacular-looking dish, it has the usual accompaniments except that the soy sauce is prettily drizzled along one side of the plate and a wasabi rosette is centred on a precision-cut carrot flower. Inside the roll are needles (they're that slim) of carrot and cucumber, along with salmon, shrimp, and crunchy tobiko. Marks for the freshness, marks for the tidily formed rice, and--we're not finished yet--Jung has assembled the slices of roll into a blossom shape and topped them with a salad of tiny scallops. Size isn't important: each is moist, tastes of the grill, and sets off the crispness of asparagus, peppers, and micro greens with a light teriyaki sauce based dressing. That's a lot going on for one plate, but the flavours are clean and distinct. I'd order this chef's special again, except there's a dozen others to try.

Jung does lovely things with fish. Go for dinner and you get his amuse-bouche, a wedge of grilled mackerel to chopstick apart, its rich succulence cut with a slightly sweet, slightly spiced chili glaze. (Lunch time, before anyone asks, you get edamame.) Monkfish is also flaky and moist, two pieces stacked beside a still life of baby bok choy, broccoli flower, and a cauliflower sprig, with a shiitake mushroom underneath like a cushion. The thin sauce blends the heat of wasabi with tosazu, which tastes like a sweeter relation of lemony ponzu and was so delicious we asked for spoons. Main dishes lean strongly to seafood (by the way, great reports on the fiery seafood soup): red snapper with ginger-garlic sauce, baked eggplant and shrimp with ”creamy, spicy“ sauce, and, on the cold front, dishes like spicy octopus salad and a salad of salmon belly and skin with jalapeno dressing. Six plump, juicy oysters got the Japanese Rockefeller treatment, set on a bed of enoki mushrooms and spinach and blanketed in a spicy and suave sauce, the frilly-edged shells echoed in a curly endive salad. The only disappointment of the night was an order of gyoza that seemed to have lain around too long on the grill. Their tough dough didn't do justice to the pork and watercress inside.

A small but intelligent wine list, local and Japanese beers, and premium or house sakes round out the drinks list, or you can stick with tea, which comes free like the plate of fresh, chilled fruit to finish. Cost depends on whether you order ramen, choose a set dinner ($14.95 to $29.95), or invest $50 and up per person in a multicourse menu. Our bill, with a small flask of sake, was $39 before tax and tip. Given the sweet and attentive service, the chic setting, the amiable background jazz, and the well-prepared and -presented plates, we thought it excellent value.

BLACK TUNA JAPANESE BISTRO 202-1184 Denman Street, 604-408-7557. Open weekdays 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. (closed Tuesday lunch times), weekends 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.

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