The question ‘red or white?’ was, according to now unfashionable man of letters Kingsley Amis, one of the most unpleasant and unwelcome phrases that a man of taste should ever have to contend with. Apocryphal or not it’s a quip that speaks more of tweedy, elbow-patched snobbery than wine appreciation. There’s always someone, somewhere with a red nose who knows. Nevertheless it’s still a funny bit, albeit for a bilious bigot (some of his correspondence with Philip Larkin would make Farage blush). Had he been born in a different age I think he might have felt similarly of the phrase ‘cheap sushi’. Wisdom has it that these are two words that should always be separated by other words. You can be passionate about sushi and be highly motivated by thrift, but not simultaneously.
You will not need to concern yourself with the consequences of cheap sushi at Matsukawa – it is reassuringly expensive by Dublin standards. In Tokyo or New York it’s ashtray money, chump change. We can talk about the idea of ‘value’ at a later point. It is also Ireland’s first true omakase restaurant and for people who care about Japanese food this is a big deal. Some eighteen months in it’s still one of the toughest reservations in town. Sure – Cork has had a couple of places for a while, but not like this. Besides, I don’t get the big bucks to talk about regional restaurants. Yet.
The term omakase can be glossed in a couple of ways but it essentially means that you are putting yourself in the hands of the acutely skilled chef on the other side of the counter. You are liberated from the tyranny of choice. The menu that you are presented with is a formality, a courteous itinerary. It is a measure of your good taste that you have chosen to part with the hundred bucks it takes to secure one of these eight stools. It is a civilised but not perhaps civilising experience. If you’ve ever eaten high-end omakase in New York City you’ll know what I’m getting at. 20th century captains of industry had their clubby steakhouses, their hide-bound wine lists brimming with first-growth Bordeaux to go with the prime ribs.
The 2000s saw equally vile but leaner counterparts from finance and tech metastasise around exclusive sushi joints. Here were exotic (exclusionary) places where they could evacuate obscene sums for food that they had no desire to understand beyond their ability to do so. This resulted in an arms-race for luxe ingredients – caviar, uni and truffles deployed with an un-Japanese abandon. This was the era of bromakase. The fit-out of such places often involved a particular type of timber veneration – with talk of mytho-poetically expensive planks being transported (by hot-air balloon perhaps) from abandoned Hokkaido temples and the likes. Whatever could that be about? In the spirit of full disclosure though – one of my most prized possessions is a pair of chopsticks hewn from the true cross.
Their singular appeal to the malignantly monied may be waning though. Pete Wells (of the New York Times) wrote in 2023 (when he still had the stomach for it) that Korean fine dining had essentially ended the “supremacy of French cuisine” in the context of that city. With eleven Michelin starred places (and counting) in the five boroughs you could credibly claim that it might even supplant the highest-end omakases too. Who knows? Historically when American attention moves from Japan to Korea things work out just fine.
Back in Dublin though, from which my attention has again strayed, Matsukawa is located at the junction of Queen and Benburb, which is not very like the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It occupies a neat little red-brick boîte across the way from Fidelity (nee Dice Bar) that was previously home to a well-intentioned coffee place called Woke Cafe. Yup. All the caffeine in the world couldn’t stop it from slipping into the big sleep. Codladh sámh. The room now is pared-back, white and bright, not designed to flatter diners. If the dining room feels a little ascetic though, the bathroom feels as if you’ve stumbled onto the set of Shogun. You’ve got stepping stones, raked gravel, flickering candlelight, the whole nine. There’s a kind of ‘water feature’ too but sadly not one of those Toto™ ones that whispers sakura-scented haiku as you go about your business.
Omakase dining can induce trepidation in the uninitiated and with good reason. The hush, the cost and the rules can seem at odds with our Irish gregariousness. We are gaijin. Any anxiety should evaporate though when you are welcomed warmly upon arrival. The two young ladies who swish about discreetly in their kimonos are eager and happy to answer any questions that you might have. Think of it as dinner and a (quiet) show. They are not there to rap you on the knuckles for attempting sticks with the sushi although nigiri is traditionally eaten by hand in one mouthful, fish-side down. Good green tea will be poured and that’s your cue to order some sparkling (dessei) sake to help the (excellent) sashimi down. You’ll have already enjoyed some starters of say, marinated spinach or slow-cooked spinach. The sashimi will almost certainly be followed by a dainty little pot of chawanmushi, a rich savoury custard inset with whatever chef feels best that day – mushrooms perhaps, maybe little shrimp. Gentle foreplay.
There will then be a sequence, a succession, a narrative of nigiri and that’s what you are here for. Matsukawa is a sushi-ya, this is what it does. This is sushi in the Edomae style – ‘Edo’ being the old name for Tokyo. It is broadly characterised by its recourse to the dry-aging and curing of different species to better accentuate qualities (deemed) particular to them. Such techniques of course also extend the ‘shelf-life’ of a protein that spoils easily. The suggestion of vinegar in your palm-warmed rice serves a similar purpose of preservation. When it comes to sushi preparation nothing is accidental and even classicism has a spectrum. There’s little point in describing in detail each of the (eleven) pieces as yours will inevitably differ. Also, this sort of preparation is personal to the man behind the counter – the selection I enjoyed differs quite markedly from those described by some early reviewers, with fewer of the flourishes favoured by former chef Takuma Tamaoki. Nevertheless chef-patron Yu Uchida talked me through some the preparations that he and current counter-man Shiki-San bring to bear.
Hamachi and Dory are salted for 15 minutes to firm up before receiving a dab of potent fresh wasabi (grown in Nagano). O -Toro, the prized buttery belly-flesh of the Bluefin is dry-cured for six days to amplify its flavour while Turbot is cured with dried konbu. The yamasa soy sauce (shoyu) that barely anoints some pieces is blended in-house with sake and konbu in a 3-day process. Observing the calm dextrousness of the preparation is quite spellbinding. The quiet of the room feels rarefied, like a different, truer kind of luxury. Some early concerns that all of the fish was being flown in have been addressed with the majority coming from Irish waters. The tuna is still sourced from Spain, the hamachi from The Netherlands. The Fish-Stock Miso soup is at once profoundly piscine and incredibly delicate. You are moved back for a moment before you can’t stop moving in. I’m told that the stock process involves various stages of ‘washing’ and clarifying of myriad carcasses. It is as close to transcendence as a bowl of cloudy soup can be.
We (sickos) all noted some months ago when the Michelin people added the restaurant to their list that a star would be a formality. So no – you will not find ‘cheap sushi’ here but in real terms you will find real value. This level of authenticity, restraint and precision will almost certainly cost more when that star appears. It will doubtless still be worth it.
Right now if you want to say kanpai a couple of times during dinner you are probably talking about €150 per head. Many thanks again to Uchida-San for taking the time to speak with me about his splendid restaurant, it was much appreciated. When I asked if he had opened Matsukawa with the ambition of attaining the accolade he replied in the negative, before adding – ‘although it would be nice to be the first’.
Quite so. Gochisu sama deshita.
Words: Conor Stevens
