When you think of omakase places, establishments such as Shinji by Kanesaka and Hashida Sushi come to mind almost immediately. However, the omakase sets offered by both Shinji and Hashida will easily set you back more than $300 and that is not a price most people (or at least me) are willing to fork out very often for a meal. Teppei has omakase sets that start from $80 but the queue for their omakase dinner is insane and honestly, having tried it once, I don’t think I will want to go through the hassle of trying to get a seat again. So where are the restaurants that are supposed to fill the gap between the really cheap and really expensive omakase places?

Enter Manseki 満席, which means ‘sold out’ or ‘fully occupied’ in Japanese, located at Robertson Walk right next to the bustling Wine Connection Tapas Bar & Bistro. Up till a few months ago, the name “Manseki” was unheard of to me. I only heard about it when I learnt that Chef Ron Leo, after having spent numerous years at Tatusya, had left to helm a restaurant: Manseki. Those of you who have been served by Chef Ron before will know that he is cheeky, skilled and knowledgable. Each dish served by him comes with a detailed explanation of what the dish is made of, the best way to eat it and possibly even how the dish came about.

Chef Ron recommended me to visit him on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday. Those are supposed to be the days when their ingredients are freshest. Omakase, as most of you should already know, translates to “let the chef decide” and your meal will be prepared based on what the chef feels is the freshest or best. With Chef Ron making the decisions for me, I knew that I was in great hands.

My entire Omakase meal took more than 2 hours, with me being dazzled by Chef Ron’s skills at the sushi counter and being entertained by his numerous jokes and stories. If you’re going for Omakase, I highly recommend sitting at the counter so that you get a more intimate dining experience, a view of how your food is prepared and you get to interact with the chef.

This picture shows Chef Ron serving uni on a hand and topping it off with his special seasoning. When I asked him why he requested for the uni to be eaten off the hand rather than off a plate, he said that he can't quite put it into words but the taste of uni when eaten right from its shell, a plate or a hand all differ from each other. It's something to do with the 气 from the body that makes that slight difference in taste. I tried this for myself and honestly couldn't really tell whether the difference in taste came from the freshness of the uni, or that the seasoning simply enhanced the sweetness of the creamy uni or it was simply a perceived difference. The bottomline is that the uni was lip smacking good!

Just in case you're thinking that my post will be another 10-20 paragraphs long, fret not as the remaining dishes I had during my Omakase dinner will be posted shortly after this. But for those who can't wait, the important thing for you to know is that my Omakase dinner at Manseki cost $165, filling the gap that I was talking about earlier. And after having such a satisfying dinner at Manseki, it makes me wonder why the restaurant was almost empty when I first stepped in. It's time for this secret to be shared with the world.