Ronin - High End Izakaya with 125 Japanese whiskeys!!

thanks for joining me as I travel the world going from fine dining through the street food and local specialties all in an effort to find the world's best seafood what's up folks I'm currently in Hong Kong one of my favorite cities in the whole world staying in my favorite suburb chung-won one that is just an amazing mashup of tradition and new modern exorbitant wealth not surprisingly it's home to some incredible restaurants tonight I'm being either one of one of my favorite restaurants in this area called Ronin in a way it's more well known for late-night eats but it is getting a reputation for fine dining and heating a table is actually getting quite difficult now let me tell you the truth it's kind of hard to find I've been maybe four times and every time I get a bit turned around partly because the streets are a big mess here and partly because the door is just really hard to find if you find yourself to the street famous for antiques and handicrafts they into this little booth selling electronics next to the yakiniku is a doorway so on one side is the Velo cafe on the other is elsweyr and then here that door that is unmarked that's it so Ronin is a modern style izakaya which basically means like snack bar food but as you'll see this is far from your typical bar food apart from anything else they have an almost intimidating drinks list including of course sake and wine and that kind of thing but then perhaps the biggest range of Japanese whiskeys I've ever seen it's really remarkable in total they have about a hundred and twenty-five different Japanese whiskeys including packet suru thirty five-year-old pure malt that they're selling for over three hundred and eighty US dollars for 50 mils fortunately they have some reasonable stuff on there as well so I went for the a twelve-year malt and grain and some mineral water to start off my meal so here's the two bottles they know people are into it's a display so you can take a photo now like a lot of high-end whiskey bars they serve it with a big ball of ice pretty cool to actually see one of the head waitresses carving all of these in front of you as you're having your meal cutting all the different pieces of ice up so the menus are arranged every day it's a new one they've got a whole big range of raw stuff then small kind of sharing style dishes a lot of it is seafood surprise surprise that's why I'm here as well as some bigger dishes and I was taken by their tasting menu which is not super cheap but given their range that this restaurant has to offer at a hundred and fifty one dollars for what it was gonna provide sounded like a pretty good deal of course you're going to have drinks on top of that started off with some spinach with dressing little colds kind of appetizer was nice and then I actually added on three additional oysters to the one that was included in the sampler included in the tasting menu is a gear oyster with grapes toeses ooh and sudachi but I ordered three additional cent posters with Red Sea so vinegar granite and sudachi and I have to say they were all phenomenal but definitely I preferred the one that I ordered next up came a sampler of sashimi it was five different kinds of sashimi a range beam in a clockwise fashion basically going from the most delicate flavors to the richest now overall I thought these were really nice except the shrimp to be honest it lacked flavor it wasn't an outstanding boat and shrimp and then it's nice that they serve their the torso their fried however it was obviously fried much earlier in the day cold and just dripping with oil it was like it didn't get given a chance to be drained at all and to me it just tasted of mediocre oil which was really disappointing the next dish in the tasting was Unni now this was a beautiful-looking dish a huge helping of Unni along with some kind of deep-fried batter flakes and herbes would say said to mix right up I have to say that weenie was quite high quality but completely overpowered by the additional things that they wanted it mixed up with actually found myself trying to leave the stuff on the side so I could enjoy the Unni by itself I think it kind of ruined the dish having it with such overpowering flavors and again the greasy fried pieces that they had included the couple to the left of me were having a mixed platter and it seems like the this looks like a better only dish that came served in a crab shell with pieces of crab meat looked a lot lighter next up was an absolute standout this was sardine tartar sodding season at the moment these fattier oilier fish are just beautiful at this time of year here of all the dishes that so far was my favorite serve with purple potato chips which again would be nice to have seen them cooked a little bit more recently and a little bit you know warm and fresh but overall this dish was just outstanding an amazing flavor and I would go back just for this one day she of nothing else next up I ordered two additional sushi Mia's because this was going to be the last of the cold dishes that is black cod and then also scallops both good but the cod was definitely the better of the two the scallops to be honest really lacked flavor next up was a tempura of a Naga which is sea he'll a much milder eel than the one that you get more often the unagi this was served with a dipping sauce and a slightly spicy numbing salt next up was maybe my favorite a variety of mackerel grew beautifully served with the bone really simple dish but this is exactly the kind of dish that and hezekiah should be serving especially in upscale one so I paired it with a glass of light red a tempura nello from New Zealand actually and this was another phenomenal dish this is in season and this is an izakaya down right [Music] next up was half a quail in a beautiful deep-fried batter again I don't usually eat a lot of deep-fried food but this was beautifully done and rounding out the heavy dishes this is the naggy the freshwater eel over a rice that again has a sense of peppers and pickles in it a really hearty and indulgent way to round out the stodgy dishes finally a soup that includes turnip and turnip leaves now ronin doesn't serve desserts but they do have a dessert drink included I opted not for the coffee showed you instead going for the coke only one it was light it was refreshing and a really surprising but delicious end to the meal [Music] so that was a fantastic meal a couple of little missteps but overall great but another great reminder to me not to going to eat at these kind of places what I'm so heavily jet-lagged I kind of lost track of the price and with three drinks that came in at about two hundred and eighty US dollars and then over three hundred with the tip not a cheap meal I have not a typical user client by any standard but if you're looking to treat yourself you check it out I'd probably recommend coming with two or three people though please do like and subscribe for your seat at the table for my future journeys to find the world's best seafood [Music]

Channel: World's Best Seafood

Views: 24,671

Keywords: ronin, hong kong, izakaya, japanese, sheung wan, review, japanese whiskey, bar, HK

Id: SgVpUAPdeyM

Length: 8min 49sec (529 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 31 2018