Taste of zen

>> Jun-i’s elegant, exotic and seductive
sushi guarantees inner peace

by A.J. KINIK

In this business, sometimes it pays to listen to your guests. You might have a completely different cuisine in a completely different part of town in mind, and then you find out your guest is “feeling zen.” What do you do? Force the issue?

With a highly rated sushi bar in close vicinity, and the words of the ancients (or Forest Whitaker, take your pick)—“the Way of the Samurai is one of immediacy, and it is best to dash in headlong”— echoing through my head, we changed course entirely.

Jun-i, Laurier’s chicest sushi bar, was not new to me. I’d been treating myself to chef Junichi Ikematsu’s outstanding sushi and sashimi from time to time ever since he opened his solo venture in 2005.

I’d been seduced by the elegance of the sashimi sampler ($15), which matches five different seafood offerings with five different exotic dipping sauces and five different exotic garnishes, and arranges them into a visual and gastronomical medley that can only be described as stunning. I’d also had my mind blown by their barbecued eel dynamite roll ($11), which is quite simply one of the most extra-sensory pieces of sushi I’ve ever encountered. What was new to me was Jun-i’s lunch special.

If you haven’t had the distinct pleasure of paying Jun-i a visit yet, lunchtime is ideal. Already a subdued, relaxed space, with its clean lines and its soothing sylvan scenery, Jun-i is somehow even calmer at midday. And its three-course lunch menu—including five specials—is designed to be gentle (well, gentler) on the pocketbook.

That said, Jun-i is not without its incongruities—it’s not a meditation centre, after all—and a good part of the charm of a recent lunch date came from the fact that the stereo was playing an early jazz sampler the whole while, giving the experience a Woody Allen-esque feel (minus the kvetching).

With three appetizers to choose from, my guest chose the seaweed salad. And Jun-i being Jun-i, the seaweed salad that arrived was not the standard heap of overly dressed, processed seaweed you find at other restaurants. Instead, she received a fetching arrangement of four different seaweeds—ranging in colour from dark green to mauve—with a yuzu and shiso leaf vinaigrette to dip them in.

I, on the other hand, started with Jun-i’s miso soup, a perfectly seasoned cloud of white miso adorned with minced scallions, julienned enoki mushrooms, and a dash of shichimi togarashi to add a little spark.

The five specials included three hot entrées from the kitchen, and two selections from the sushi bar (manned by Ikematsu himself). Given my experiences with Jun-i’s sushi and sashimi in the past, snubbing the house specialty and ordering only from the kitchen was out of the question. At the same time, having never sampled the kitchen’s goods, and knowing that Ikematsu thinks highly enough of his kitchen’s talents to offer a multi-course tasting menu at night that gives both ends of the operation equal billing, there was no question of going with sushi and sashimi only.

I chose the Alaskan black sea bass ($26), and the plate consisted of five hunks of perfectly poached fish dressed with a bright and snappy yuzu dressing, surrounded by four steamed littleneck clams, and topped with a bed of baby greens, with an aromatic, yuzu-tinged broth to boot. (If you haven’t picked up on this yet, the folks at Jun-i love yuzu, the prized Asian fruit—for its citrus notes, for its sweetness and for its colour.)

My guest opted for the “Sushi Mori” lunch ($28), which turned out to be an excellent introduction to Ikematsu’s craft: eight pieces of nigiri sushi made with eight different types of seafood—from organic B.C. salmon to amberjack, red snapper to scallop—and two nori rolls—one with lump crabmeat, and one with barbecued eel.

Again, the presentation was flawless and the seafood superior—precisely the exacting standards one expects from a sushi bar of Jun-i’s calibre.

When it came to dessert, the results were a bit more mixed (a delicate steamed mango pudding adorned with tapioca pearls being the highlight), but then we hadn’t come here looking for dessert, and, frankly, we’d already found the inner peace we were looking for.