East meets West many ways these days, what with Nintendo buying the Seattle Mariners, but the most felicitous conjuncture is in the crossover kitchen. The idea took root in California some two decades ago, with what was then called Franco-Japanese cooking; now it’s referred to more fashionably as Pacific Rim cuisine, with California being an integral part. Here some call it fusion, which reminds me of bad jazz-rock, while others call it Eurasian, though our own Eurasia restaurant never quite got its act together. Three of Chicago’s best restaurants offer crossover cooking, pairing French mainly with Japanese but with other Asian styles as well.
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Jimmy Rohr worked the front of the house at some great French restaurants, including the original L’Escargot and the long-gone La Reserve. He hired chef Yoshi Katsumura right out of Jean Banchet’s kitchen at Le Francais and urged him to try zesting his contemporary French dishes with the seasonings of his ancestral homeland. After a bit of experimentation, such as presenting sashimi on the menu as “Japanese style salmon” marinated in saki with graceful, elongated enoki mushrooms, and creating tuna tartare with wasabi, Japanese mustard, ginger, and scallions, Rohr says “eventually Japanese touches slipped into almost everything.”
Katsumura left in 1982 to found Yoshi’s Cafe. Six years and three chefs later, Jimmy came up with Kevin Shikami, who once worked under Katsumura. Now a partner, Shikami dreams up such treasures as ragout of shrimp with ginger barbecue sauce in a phyllo nest with scallions and baby bok choy surrounded with coconut cream and grilled loin of veal with saki, dry sherry sauce with ginger, scallions, shiitake mushrooms, and soy and Chinese hoisin sauce.
Katsumura, who is also a fish wholesaler for leading restaurants, looks for unusual seafare such as rosefish, similar to Mediterranean red mullet, which gets his own Oriental white butter sauce. Classic beurre blanc involves a reduction of shallots, wine, and vinegar into which butter is beaten. At Yoshi’s the butter is flavored with a reduction of saki and soy spiked with Japanese mustard, wasabi, lemon, pepper, and ginger.
I’ve experienced a host of fascinating meals here, including a complete Japanese kaiseki dinner composed of a dozen sparkling miniature courses. Every day yields a new surprise: take, for example, a fried egg roll filled with goat cheese and dressed with Chinese black vinegar and eggplant relish. At the same meal I also had some of the best fried calamari I’ve ever tasted, amplified by sweet hot chili sauce and a sesame-studded aioli sauce with yellow peppers. Kelch also treats giant, tasty greenlip mussels to a steam bath of yellow Thai curry, coconut, and basil.
Jimmy’s Place, 3420 N. Elston, serves lunch from 11:30 to 2 Monday through Friday and dinner from 5 to 9:30 Monday through Saturday. Call 539-2999.
