Entree Kibbles: The Suju Bento from JW360° Suju Masayuki Japanese Restaurant @ Jewel Changi Airport [Singapore]

Saturday, June 05, 2021

The Suju Bento from JW360° Suju Masayuki Japanese Restaurant @ Jewel Changi Airport [Singapore]

Although Jewel Changi Airport would be closed till 13 June 2021, I thought there's no harm to publish the review of JW360° Suju Masayuki Japanese Restaurant since the mall would be open in slightly more than a week's time and hopefully by then, we could all start dining-in again!

It's nice to dine in at Suju Masayuki as you could soak in the views of the iconic 40-meter tall HSBC Rain Vortex, said to be "the world's tallest indoor waterfall", with your souls being comforted by the therapeutic sound of water.

As usual, my main concern was food and being overly greedy and indecisive mean I would often pay extra attention to bentos as they provide a lot of variety! The suju bento, with dessert, definitely caught my attention even though I would much prefer pork / chicken / beef over fish.

Tea - one big pot per person for S$3.00 and it appeared to retain heat extremely well since the tea remained hot throughout our meal. I expressed surprised when I tried to finish it quickly before leaving, and almost scalded my tongue in haste.

Sakura White Chocolate Cake - Alex's order since I am not usually a fan of Japanese cake, except for maybe strawberry shortcake. This was pretty good with a balance of sweetness and sourness, with what seemed to be bites of strawberry seeds; my untrained taste buds can't discern the pistachio in the sponge cake.

Chawanmushi - this would be the kind of chawanmushi I would strongly recommend to others; it's pricey at S$9.00 but the serving was also a lot larger than your typical chawanmushi. Most importantly, the taste was more flavourful (maybe due to the dried scallops) and contained three small prawns and two pieces of chicken.

Agedashi Tofu - I must have been feeling guilty over the ton of sinful food I had been having before this COVID-19 phase two (heightened alert) kicked in as this is one Japanese side dish I wouldn't order in normal times. Small, wooden coffin-like holder contained chilli powder.

Sitting in a shallow pool of lightly seasoned broth, the tofu was expectedly bland with smooth insides. What's more interesting for me were the gelatinous crust covering the tofu and the delicious shimeji mushrooms. And yes, the chilli powder came in handy.

Gindara Misozuke Yaki - meaning "grilled miso-marinated black cod", my apology for not taking the picture before it was half devoured by Alex. Said to be the restaurant's signature, both of us thought it was too salty for our liking and very much preferred the ones I can made at home, using my Ninja Foodi Grill.

Suju Bento - here comes my brunch!

Two different view for your viewing pleasure.

You can choose between white and seasoned rice. Honestly, I am more accustomed to seeing brown rice which I would not choose given their not as palatable taste and texture. Seeing seasoned rice on the menu was refreshing; so why not?

The "seasoned" in this case refers to the seaweed, silverfish and sesame seeds; not my cup of my tea and I think their plain, white rice from Iizuna area in Nagano would have sufficed. The miso soup, despite its unconventional appearance with plenty of beancurd skin, also failed to impress us.

Crunchy green pickles were enjoyable; the four appetizers were acceptable (not fabulous) and I totally loved the two pieces of chicken, even though more with the accompanying mayo sauce, rather than the marination of the chicken. To be fair, they were juicy!

It's been a while since I last had such amazing saba fish! I was praying hard that it wouldn't be fishy, as with the case with many restaurants, and my prayers were answered! The fish meat was also not overcooked and each bite was a moment of blissfulness! According to the website, their fish "is selected and delivered by air from the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo"!

I was about to take my leave when the staff scrambled over and said they had yet to pass us the dessert that was part of the bento; totally slipped my mind. It's vanilla ice cream which wasn't too sweet with the taste that it came from some high quality brand. Yum yum!

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Hits and misses, with more of the latter, but I wouldn't mind a second visit to check out other Japanese dishes. One dish that I would definitely reorder in my next visit shall be the chawanmushi!