Shige’s Red Carpet Fine Dining on the Terrace, Boise
Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman
This restaurant review was originally published in the Idaho Statesman at: http://bit.ly/diRkti
The fresh scallop appetizer at Shige Matsuzawa’s new Japanese/French fusion restaurant is flat-out stunning: A mound of sliced and shimmering raw scallops are ringed by red rose petals, a fan of sliced shiitake mushroom and clusters of tobiko caviar glowing both translucent orange and luminous green (tinted with wasabi).
The $12 dish, assembled with a jeweler’s precision and an artist’s eye, tastes of scallopy sweetness, sea air and a subtle mustard vinaigrette. It’s delicate, delicious. And it reveals a creative side to chef Matsuzawa that I’d failed to notice at his more traditional sushi bars.
Matsuzawa seems intent on expanding that creativity, as well as his floorspace, with several new ventures. In November, he opened Shige’s Red Carpet Fine Dining on the Terrace, Shige’s Japanese Steakhouse and Shige’s Saketini Bar & Lounge right next to his long-established and very popular sushi restaurants Shige Japanese Cuisine and Shige Express.
That’s a lot of Shiges. But rather than thinking of them as five discrete venues, envision a single eating empire with multiple menus. (After all, they cluster like conjoined quintuplets on the second floor of this 8th Street location in Downtown Boise). The menu I like best – thanks to those scallops and that unique Japanese/French fusion approach – is Shige’s Red Carpet Fine Dining on the Terrace.
Of course, fine dining and innovation don’t come cheap. And that’s likely why I’ve seen no more than a table or two occupied here when Matsuzawa’s other venues are buzzing. Most potential diners probably spy the Fresh Seafood Tower for $59 or the 8-ounce Kobe rib eye for $49, reflexively clutch their wallets and veer toward Shige’s relatively less expensive sushi bar or new, if predictable, teppanyaki-style steakhouse.
Yet many of the appetizers, soups, salads and entrees on the Red Carpet menu aren’t fiscally punishing – steamed clams for $10, soup of the day for $8, daikon salad for $6 – and each of those dishes, dollar for dollar, are utterly delicious.
Now if you think a Japanese and French co-mingling is unseemly, it isn’t. I used to drool over a Franco-Asian place in Los Angeles in the ’80s, and Matsuzawa himself had a relationship with a French fusion restaurant in Japan way back when. The two cuisines can, as Matsuzawa proves here, produce a pleasing marriage of opposites.
The Foie Gras Ala Japonais appetizer ($19) is a prime example. Tiny lobes of oh-so-French foie gras are paired with a very Asian yuzu ponzu dressing. The result is a trance-inducing blend of the ultra-rich and lightly bracing.
The Kurobuta pork chops entree ($18) with creamy miso sauce and caramelized pear reduction is another cross-cultural success. The chops, cooked to perfect pinkness and cloaked in a slightly sweet yet savory sauce, taste both Asian and earthly.
The pan-seared sea bass ($23), two fillets sandwiching a crunchy, deep-fried wonton skin and drizzled with a cream-and-butter-based shiitake mushroom sauce, comes out mostly French with the woodsy hint of a Japanese forest.
For dessert, the Fruit Tobanyaka ($11.95) – a kind of warm compote of mango, blueberry, strawberry and banana, served bubbling over a Sterno flame, that you then scoop onto vanilla ice cream – is, well, just as mouthwatering as it sounds.
Still, I do have a few issues with Shige’s Red Carpet: The wine list is woefully small (though there are lots of sakes and saketinis); the outside Terrace can be drafty in winter and a little bleak when bereft of other diners (that’s why, instead, I’ve eaten all my meals in the comfy bar); and finding the bathroom in a building with the cold, concrete heart of a parking garage can be a little creepy. But that food, oh that food. It quiets the quibbles with every bite.
Shige’s Red Carpet Fine Dining on the Terrace is an awkward mouthful of a name, but this under-appreciated new restaurant speaks multilingual poetry on the plate.
See the whole story at the Idaho Statesman: http://www.idahostatesman.com/foodanddrink/story/1076547.html
