Shima Celebrates Maguro Festival This March!

Shima features classic maguro (tuna) dishes ranging from sashimi, yakimono, katsu, to toro and a limited sweet treat!

CONTENT: Luxe Society Asia
IMAGES: Shima Restaurant

From now till 16 April, Shima restaurant will indulge your tastebuds with the Maguro Festival Ala Carte Menu! Helmed by one of the best kaiseki chefs in Hokkaido, Chef Hoshiba Fumihiko, the new menu prepares the popular maguro in a multitude of ways that will surely delight any maguro-lover. On top of well-loved Maguro dishes such as maguro sashimi, sushi and donburi, Shima celebrates the iconic fish in several other culinary variations!

Yakimono (Grilled)

Maguro Steak (100g, S$60): Prized fatty tuna-belly ootoro deftly grilled teppanyaki style for a wonderfully smoked skin, and tender pink centre which melts tantalisingly in the mouth. Drizzled with fragrant butter sauce and shoyu. While the tuna was thoroughly cooked, a single bite of this will coat your lips in grease and make the tuna extremely rich, making consuming the whole piece of meat in one bite to be an impossible feat! Instead, consider cutting the tuna up into small pieces and combine this protein with the mushroom and lettuce that the protein was served with to even out the richness of the tuna.

Grilled Otoro with Bamboo (S$60): The delectable ootoro is seared in special Japanese sauce, and paired with crisp, refreshing takenoko (bamboo) shoots. The tuna here is slightly less cooked to its counterpart, with a pinkish hue in the middle. However, the meat is still rather too rich to be eaten on its own, consider ordering a side dish of rice or other vegetables to pair with the dish, as the bamboo alone is rather plain and will not help to compensate for the richness.

Katsu (Fried)

Akami Katsu (S$50): An old school take on the preparation of deep frying tuna, fresh tuna is covered with light, crunchy rice puffs and then crisp-fried for a few minutes. Served in your own preference of a zesty tartar sauce with smoked radish or rich tonkatsu sauce. Although this dish was not as oily as the aforementioned dishes, the taste of the tuna was missing and entirely covered up by the rice puffs, even when the rice puffs were taken off the tuna. Some pieces of tuna were even overcooked to the point they were hard to bite into and were overly chewy.

Raw Fusion (Japanese-Italian)

Maguro Tartare (S$30): A Japanese-Italian fusion dish, gleaming-red diced akami is marinated in wasabi shoyu, and paired with a layer of buttery avocado mayo. Topped with plump ikura, Oba leaf and onions.

Of course, one can also enjoy otoro, chutoro, akami, aburi sashimi, S$25 for akami sashimi (red part of tuna), $35 for toro sashimi (fatty part of tuna). Maguro sushi nigiri (S$40), or maguro donburi ($40) can also be found on the maguro festival menu. Complete the ala-carte dishes with add-on sets for S$5 (miso soup, chawanmushi, pickles) and S$10 (miso soup, chawanmushi, pickles, mini assorted tempura).

Large, Sweet and Everything Nice
For the very first time in Singapore, Shima will be exclusively bringing in the premium strawberry breed Skyberry for Shima guests in a special tie-up with Utsunomiya farms. This exquisite strawberry is grown in extremely small numbers and produces a very special strawberry that exhibits exceptional taste, flavour and shape – true giants in size and taste.

Originating from Tochigi Prefecture, Japan’s number one producer of strawberries, these bright-red giants are the fruition of 17 years of research for its marvelous flavor, juicy and mellow texture. The winter sun, fertile land and streams of clear water from Nikko and Nasu in Tochigi prefecture creates the best conditions for growing strawberries.

Harvested at peak harvest season in March for the biggest, juiciest strawberries, the Skyberry will be exclusively available in Singapore at Shima restaurant only. A pair of the succulent berries will be served with every dessert ordered, limited to only 50 pieces a day for 2 weekends (16-18, 23-25 March). Believe me when I say that these strawberries are to die for, and are a must order course on the menu!

Shima is located at #01-00 Goodwood park hotel, 22 Scotts Road, singapore 228221. Shima is open daily for lunch at 12.00 – 2.30pm and dinner at 6.00 – 10.30pm.

For Reservations please call: 6734 6281 or email: www.shimarestaurant.com.sg