maguro truffle

***** (5 stars)

I’ve previously reviewed Kabooki Sushi here, but we continue to return regularly, and the food has advanced from fantastic to mind-blowing, so it deserves another mention (my first repeat review, after more than 400).

As I said previously, we’ve had sushi at some of the top restaurants all over the world, and I’ve never had a meal as good as the ones I consistently get from Chef Henry Moso at Kabooki Sushi.

We always have the omakase, where you put yourself in the chef’s hands. But we ask him to add extra courses, and to pair it with wines. We usually have about seven courses, and it costs around $125, about double what the original omakase ran. To put this in perspective, I’ve paid more than that for a single course at some high end sushi restaurants, and not gotten as good food!

Similarly, the wine pairing at $30 is cheaper than a single glass of wine at those restaurants (Nobu, I’m looking at you).

The really amazing thing is that in a dozen visits, Chef Henry has never repeated himself, except for one dish, the Maguro Truffle, that we always request. So that’s something like 100 unique dishes!

Not only is each a work of art, but the combination of flavors is so perfect (salty, sweet, umami, citrus, fatty, acidic, rich, light — often all combined in one bite) that it defies description.

And sushi isn’t an easy food to pair with wine. Yet the matches are always perfect, and usually include minor grigio, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinot noir, cabernet and sparkling wine.

On our latest visit I showed Chef Henry a picture of a dish we had earlier in the week at Morimoto in New York. Two hours later, at the conclusion of our meal, Chef Henry, inspired by the idea, presented us with this:

otoro tartare with assorted condiments and seaweed chips

If a chef can come up with that on the spur of the moment, imagine what other treasures are in store for us in the future!

Here are some other things we had in that same meal at Kabooki:

giant clam, seaweed and pickled cucumber

compressed watermelon, tuna, ouzu sorbet

hamachi with house-made kimchi

locally caught grilled cobia

three types of fish rolled in rice paper, with apple sails, cucumber sorbet

grilled hamachi collar

If you can only dine at one restaurant in Orlando, it should be Kabooki Sushi.