NEW RESTAURANT

Wa-i Sushi #01-01 The Scarlet Hotel 33 Erskine Road Singapore 069333 Tel: 9724-0123 Open for dinner Tues to Sat: 6pm to 10pm.

WE can't decide if Wa-i Sushi is really clever, or if it missed the first lesson of "How Many Sushi Pieces Make You a Sushi Restaurant". Because we think it attended the class of "Kappo Cooking 101 - Sushi Optional" instead.

Clever because it charges you S$200 from the outset - with no choice, making us think there should be another class called "When Is It Omakase, And When Is It A Set Menu?". Clever because it's a great business model - you lock customers into spending 200 bucks on a menu that would take other mid-level Japanese restaurants longer to sell the very same dishes on an ala carte basis. Throw in some wagyu A5 (so they say), a single crab claw, canned baby abalone, garden variety sashimi and five - count 'em - pieces of sushi, and price it at the magic number that qualifies it as 'value for money' Japanese cuisine. Package it in an intimate - squashed - sushi counter-like set up, then sit back and watch the seats fill up.

And they do, in this tiny, 10-seater (thereabouts) no-frills set up in the row of quiet shops lining Erskine Road just before Scarlet Hotel per se. There's a clubby feel about it as the diners look like they're regulars, given the lengthy conversations they seem to be having with the affable owner.

Apart from him, there's one chef manning the counter and one server. The vibe is casual, friendly, very local as in non-Japanese. We don't know who's who, but its website says Wa-i is run by two chefs Simon and Steven whose resumes include restaurants like Shima, Magosaburo and Fish Mart Sakuraya.

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If you're not a sushi, uh, counter, then Wa-i is a very serviceable Japanese restaurant serving predictable cooking aimed at the mainstream palate. Think heavier seasoning, good-sized portions, and mayo on your sushi.

Theirs is a licence to fill - its style is to serve a string of basic kappo dishes with some luxury touches to justify the S$200 price tag, which is not the bargain you think it is.

You start off with a cold onsen tamago which more or less does not transport you back to breakfast at your favourite onsen in the Japanese mountains. This has a firmer, chewy yolk, still relatively slurpable in its seasoned dashi broth. A bit of uni gives it more luxe appeal. A nasty pickled octopus and wakame thing rides shotgun. Meanwhile, the chef is doing some major slicing to prepare individual sashimi platters for each of the 10 diners in front of him. It's mostly white fish with a couple of slices of pink chutoro. There's tai, hobou and marinated slices of suzuki or sea bass. Nice effort to marinate the latter to give it a bit more character. The quality is average.

A simmered dish of root vegetables cooked in dashi would look too plain on its own, so a solitary crab claw steps in gamely - pre-frozen, post-dry.

Large posters of sushi on the wall

By the time we get our next course - hamachi collar braised in a cloyingly sweet teriyaki sauce - our eyes are fixed on a TV on the back wall that's playing a teppanyaki cooking segment on loop. We wish we could get in there and have some of what's on their hotplate. Why there's a TV in the restaurant (and why teppanyaki) we don't know, just like we don't know why the restaurant walls are splattered with large posters of sushi when they keep feeding us with everything but.

A slice of wagyu steak is supposed to make us feel better, although it's from Kagoshima which is like the Don Don Donki of beef prefectures. It's not grilled but just blow-torched so it's still sashimi-like raw inside. The velvety texture gets a boost from the good garlic soy dipping sauce.

Oh, and we almost forget the miso soup, weirdly served in between courses instead of at the end of the meal, with a canned baby abalone and cubes of tofu dropped in.

When you almost forget what sushi looks like, they appear. By which time we're stuffed with pretty much everything we didn't come here to eat. While not authentic, a long strip of tai layered over rice and topped with Avruga caviar and gold leaf makes a pretty picture even if the fish is too cold, the rice is solidly packed and at the wrong temperature. A piece of pale anago drowned in sweet sauce is next, followed by kinmedai and mayo, and otoro with truffle. The final piece is an uni hand roll which starts off sweet with a funky finish.

To his credit, the chef does put effort into it, and it's on par with local chefs who try to add their own twist to compensate for the lack of training their Japanese counterparts have. It's too bad he doesn't get to do more - it would be a more original story instead of serving a pricier version of mid-range cooking. But would that tip the price over the S$200 mark?

For dessert, we get a generous scoop of sea salt ice cream tinged a curious pale green. The owner tells us it's homemade and he loves it. That makes one of us.

Being a sushi chef is to be devoted to a craft that takes years to master. Wa-i is a Japanese restaurant, period. It's not a sushi bar and anointing itself so is a disservice to restaurants that make it a calling. So just enjoy Wa-i for what it is - a small, easy-going place for passable cooking. For real sushi, S$200 can get you a higher end set lunch at a top eatery. You may not get stuffed, but at least you know what you're paying for.

Rating: 5.5

WHAT OUR RATINGS MEAN

10: The ultimate dining experience9-9.5: Sublime8-8.5: Excellent7-7.5: Good to very good6-6.5: Promising5-5.5: Average

Our review policy: The Business Times pays for all meals at restaurants reviewed on this page. Unless specified, the writer does not accept hosted meals prior to the review's publication.