Yokari serves authentic Japanese flavors

Centria Mall is Riyadh’s most luxurious and exclusive mall. It not only caters for some of the world’s most expensive brands but it also has a reputation for possessing some of the best restaurants in the capital.
Yokari the latest restaurant to open in Centria Mall is already the talk of the town. Yokari strives to give its customers the pleasure of true Japanese cuisine, uniquely refined and subtle. The Japanese themselves refer to it as “sappari” clean, neat, light and sparkling with honesty.
A reflection of the Japanese sensitivity toward foods is the great attention paid to each material being processed. Whereas the French and the Chinese tend to blend many ingredients together in one dish, the Japanese generally strive to preserve the intrinsic properties of each, so that they may all be equally important in taste as well as in appearance. Indeed, color, texture and shape are as important as the taste.
The Japanese do not divide their meals into one main course preceded by soup and accompanied by a salad and vegetables. The order of the Japanese formal meal often puts soup near the end, and usually includes both fish and meat, or several kinds of fish and a number of vegetables treated in different ways. However, a clear soup of “dashi” is usually served at the beginning of a meal. The bit of carrot used as a garnish is quite distinct in taste, color and shape; each ingredient in the soup is to be relished separately, for its own special character.
Besides soups the menu offers a tempting selection of Zensai, Japanese hors d’oeuvre. I liked Magurozuke and its unlikely fusion of Tuna and Foie gras served with avocado and garlic chips. The effort to use typical ingredients like the shiso leaf with the seabream, the Yellowtail with the yuzu (a citrus fruit rather like a lime) is evident.
Although there is a section on Salads, it should be said that the Japanese do not eat salads in the Western sense of raw salad greens tossed with a dressing. The Aemono and Sunomono dishes are roughly the Japanese equivalent of salad. Aemono refers to vegetables, fish or poultry mixed and tossed with dressings and sauces. And Sunomono is a dish consisting of vegetables and/or seafood with vinegar based dressings. I can recommend the Kunsei, a salad with salmon, avocado, eggplant in a goma ponzu dressing that is a soya-sauce and citrus-juice dressing.
However, tempura is almost the perfect dish to start a meal. Its taste puts it at the highest peak of Japanese culinary accomplishments. This dish is rightly known throughout the world, though mostly in the form of deep-fried coated prawns. In fact, almost any food can be used to make tempura that is chicken, fish, and vegetables except those that are particularly watery, such as radish, cabbage and cucumbers.
I personally enjoy Sashimi and traditional Japanese Sushi. Sashimi is the Japanese umbrella word for raw fillets of fish eaten alone, with wasabi and soya sauce. Sashimi can be eaten as a first course and it can also make up a meal by itself. Sashimi is a true delicacy, it neither tastes nor smells fishy; moreover certain types of “sashimi”, notably tuna fish, have the texture and the flavor of tender, rare beef. However, everything concerned with the handling and preparation of sashimi has to be carried out with elaborate care. The fish must be fresh and never frozen, for the drip of thawing leaches out all the flavor.
Sushi is a Japanese food based on vinegared rice garnished either with a strip of raw seafood or cooked prawns, cooked fish, vegetables, seaweed or egg. These Japanese “sandwiches” are a meal in themselves.
Sushi is prepared either by topping an oblong of vinegared rice with a dash of horse-radish and a slice of fish (this is called Nigiri Sushi), or by mixing the rice with a wide variety of delicately seasoned ingredients and rolling them in “nori” ( this is known as Makizushi).
One of my favorite Nigiri sushi topping is the unagi, baked eel. Incidentally, the menu features a baked eel flavored with a sansho leaf, Japanese pepper leaf. Eel is a very fatty fish but tasty and nourishing.
Lately, the world of sushi has literally exploded! There are nowadays endless variations of makizushi which are made with non-traditional ingredients such as cream cheese and even mango.
Sukiyaki, another widely known Japanese dish, is also featured on the menu. The word (pronounced skee-yah-kee) means “grilled on the blade of a plow”. This name reveals the origins of the dish, for in the past, farmers in the field, or hunters in the wild, often killed animals and cooked their meat over open fire on whatever utensils were available, such as a plowshare.
It should be said that modern sukiyaki is wrongly named, because the word “yaki” refers to grilled food and today’s dish is not grilled. Sukiyaki is both cooked at the table and simmered in seasoned liquid. To make beef sukiyaki, one first cooks the slices of beef, adding soya sauce as flavoring. Then the other ingredients, spring onions, onion, mushrooms, tofu, shirataki (long noodle-like threads), greens and bamboo shoots are cooked briefly.
Incidentally if you like good beef, you must order “Teriyaki Wagyu”, served with foie gras. The term “Wagyu” refers to several breeds of cattle genetically predisposed to intense marbling. Wagyu beef has a higher percentage of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and is lower in cholesterol than normal beef. The combination of these fats bring a distinctively and incomparably rich and tender flavor. The most exclusive Wagyu in the world comes from Kobe but not all Kobe beef is Wagyu. People tend to use the terms Kobe and Wagyu beef interchangeably thinking it refers to the same premium imported Japanese beef when it does not.
Western sweet desserts have become popular in Japan. However, traditional sweets and cakes made with red beans and sugar are still reserved for feast days or enjoyed between meals. Japanese normally end their meals with fresh fruit. Indeed a fresh fruit salad makes a fitting close to any Japanese meal.
A glance at the exceptional beverage selection might tempt you to order an after dinner drink like the Tiramisu Affair, an original concoction of espresso, Mascarpone cheese, vanilla syrup and chocolate sprinkled with Kinpaku, edible gold leaf.
Yokari is open now in the evenings only. However lunches will develop in due course. Reservations are recommended to avoid disappointment and are available for up to 8 persons maximum.
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