Hanare At The Intermark: Review

More than four years after it first opened, Hanare remains one of the city’s best bets for an above-average Japanese meal. The restaurant recently introduced a sushi bar where customers can watch the chefs at work & enjoy a top-flight selection of sparkling raw seafood, or better still, go all out with an omakase meal that showcases seasonal produce rarely seen in KL.

Expect the unexpected – Hanare’s omakase bounty features an ever-changing selection of delights for Japanese food lovers, with carefully sourced fresh ingredients prepared in revelatory ways that let their natural nuances shine, making us feel almost like we’re tasting them for the first time, from boiled broad beans (sora-mame) to ‘jelly ear’ fungus (kikurage), surf clams with miso vinaigrette (aoyagi) to monkfish liver (ankimo).

Sushi chef Masami Moritomo’s million-watt smile lights up Hanare’s counter as he plies his craft with deceptive effortlessness. Masami and his compatriot Akira Yonomoto team up to make the best of wild-caught whelk, Hokkaido oysters & more, hand-picked by the restaurant’s own staff in Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market & flown into KL twice weekly.

If you’re in luck, you might encounter ‘noresore’ – baby sea eels, only a few centimetres long. But if not, no worries, there are certain to be other highlights with a dizzying diversity in terms of provenance – perhaps Hokkaido-origin fish milt (shurako), Yamaguchi dried puffer fish (fugu), Fukuoka spicy cod roe (mentaiko), Chiba whitebait, Shikuoka marinated tuna intestines, Nagasaki mullet roe, Aomori vinegared seaweed, Osaka sesame bean curd, Mie wasabi octopus, Toyama salted baby squid, Akita sand fish & Aichi little neck clams, all of which can be ordered a la carte if you’re not indulging in the omakase (which costs RM250 & above). Hanare also offers a very strong selection of whisky; it’s nice to note that service is still very much a stand-out here – many thanks to Hanare’s terrific team members for their hospitality.