Morimoto Asia – A Review

Last night we went to Downtown Disney, now renamed to Disney Springs. One of the folks I’d worked with a couple of years back was having a birthday, so a half dozen of us (now all working elsewhere, or not working) got back together for a bit of a celebration.

We met at a restaurant called “Morimoto Asia”.
This is named for one of (the original?) “Iron Chef” stars.

First, the good:

The place is very well designed from a facilities point of view. Ambiance is an interesting Asian / Modern mix with a motif that reminds me a bit more of Japan than China, but doesn’t really shout either of them. Classy and comfortable.

Seating was fast, and there were plenty of servers ( in theory, 2 were assigned to our table, for 6 folks).

Then, the not-so-good:

Prices were “spectacular”. While you could “bottom feed” on things like Gung Pao Chicken for a “mere” $22 (IIRC) many main courses ran up to $30 to $50 range. That’s the main course… Sides add more. Appetizers range in the $10 to $20 band. Then there are drinks… One Sake, for example, has a $17 price on the menu. That’s for a shot glass, basically. But, you can get a nice carafe of it (I’d guess about 1 cup or 250 ml? Sphere about the size of a large orange) for $45 with two shot glasses.

My regular haunt is Wolfgang Pucks Bar, and I’d stopped there when I first arrived. Had a teaser of Hamachi nigri (a very nice white fish sushi… it is the one year old fish and there are different names for the same fish if younger or older) and a sake service totaling to $16. That was “the usual” small carafe of maybe 150 ml? Now I didn’t pay much attention to how much of the bill was which, but for an excellent nigiri sushi and sake to wash it down, that ain’t bad. (Their Pizza is to die for too ;-) So after that intro to the evening, hitting a $17 shot glass is “reentry shock”…

The Very Good:

The food is just great. The shrimp appetizer and the ‘tuna pizza’ were both just fantastic. I ordered “hamachi tartar” that comes as an ounce sized cylinder sitting in a dish of a sauce with fascinating flavors. It comes with a ‘peach’ about the size of a quail egg (some asian special fruit) and the expected wasabi and ginger. IMHO, the bare dab of wasabi was way too small to be of use (pea sized), but I’m a great lover of wasabi (Massive Quantities! I’m not crying yet! ;-) Then there was a kind of crab roll one of the folks ordered that was delicious.

The Unfortunate:

We’d told the waiter that we were going to be a bit slow as we were having a bit of a party. He seems to have taken this to mean HE ought to be slow… (The proper interpretation is more like “we want fast service for a few rounds of drinks, don’t push the move to diner service too soon”). The first round of drinks took way too long to arrive, then the appetizers were a bit slow after ordering in their arrival. Then we had a second round of drinks while waiting to place our dinner order. Time passed. Once you eat something, in about 20 minutes it starts to raise blood sugar and hunger leaves…

The bottom line is that we decided not to order dinner, but just do a second round of appetizers and drinks. I’d been eying the Peking Duck (at about $27 / person 2 people min) as I wasn’t interested in a $40 entre… and I’ve never had Peking Duck so figured this was the place to try it. Instead, went for the California Roll. Nice, but only so much you can do with a roll. The waiter made a point of their rice being special in that it wasn’t ‘sticky rice’ but was {some process they did -polished? something…} so ‘special’. Yes, it was a nice rice, but tended to fall apart just a bit in the soy sauce. They made a point that the soy sauce was their own brew. Bonito flakes and some other things. It IS a very tasty sauce, but with the hints of ‘fish sauce’ overtones, might not be suited to all sushi. In particular, vegetarians will need to ask if they have any without fish flakes in it.

The Overall:

Overall, it’s a very nice very very high end restaurant. One where ‘slow service’ ought to never happen ( or perhaps one ought to say “frequent tending without setting an agenda” ought to happen when the guests want to linger) even when the party says “we are going to be a bit slow” when prompted for dinner orders and we haven’t all read the menu yet… We likely ought to have been more “assertive” after the first slow arriving drinks round, but didn’t. Then again, perhaps being on the 2nd floor outdoor patio was part of it (further from the kitchen and bar, easier to be forgotten outside… but the view was pleasant and the night tropical air a delight…) Service was generally quite good. The waiter had a good ‘show’, with good customer skills and got the orders right. Dirty dish pickup was subtle and polite. All the things you would expect.

I would have liked to have tried their main courses, but that was not to be. Having seen their prices, I was hoping for something that lived up to them. That said, for sushi and sake, hit the Wolfgang Puck’s bar that has the sushi chef right in front of you and last night had the best hamachi I’ve ever tasted. For high end Asian Fusion with Asian Ambiance and very inventive ‘twists’ on the expected (like the soy sauce and ‘special’ rice and interesting seasoning, and tuna sashimi pizza) go to Morimoto Asia – but bring a very big wallet… Figure on $100 to $200 per person, depending on drinks and appetizers / sides added to your main course.

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