Skip to main contentTo many Americans, Japanese restaurants seem more or less alike, the way to Western eyes sumo wrestlers are indistinguishable from one another. A new Japanese restaurant, Sin Ju, whose name means "the pearl," has just opened--where else?--in the Pearl, and true to form, its menu offers few startling surprises. But the cooking is so wonderful, the presentations so gorgeous, and the space so elegant that it puts most other local Japanese establishments to shame. In every respect, Sin Ju is one of the most aesthetically pleasing spaces in culinary Portland.
The entrance doors resemble wooden gates from a medieval castle in a Kurosawa film. Inside you'll discover a shimmering fountain with lotus blossoms floating on the water, stoneware vases that might grace a superb Asian gallery, richly hued woods carved as you'd find in a Shinto temple, refined tatami rooms and artfully etched glass. The outside windows depict tsunamis, and even the restrooms have green bamboo etched on the mirrors while bonsai bamboo plants sit upon the counters. With its careful attention to detail at every turn, Sin Ju transports you to another, sumptuous world, something like the Pleasure Quarters of Edo.
As befits an island nation, Sin Ju's menu abounds with seafood. But we began with the best imaginable tofu, in two versions. The cold style ($4.50) is fresh as morning snow, the glistening cubes bathed in a green onion and ginger sauce, nestled among pea shoots and showered with pungent dried fish threads. The hot tofu ($4.50) is pure molten cream with a hint of golden crunch on the outside. Broiled salted yellowtail collar ($7) curves upward like a Nike swoosh, full of tender meat surrounded by shredded white cabbage and icy, shaved daikon. The excelling appetizer is broiled squid ($8), its rings arranged like a whole segmented cephalopod swimming in a pungent ginger sauce.
For a change of taste, there's a platter of lightly fried chunks of chicken rich with garlic sauce ($5.50); if such a dish had a Platonic model from which Chicken McNuggets had wildly diverged, Sin Ju's "chicken karaage" would approximate the perfect form. If you like steamers, you'll enjoy the clams in sake-flavored broth ($7.50); they come in a black iron pot, and the individual bowls are also made of iron. And if you're a fan of cold noodles, you'll appreciate the tenzaru ($10), where prawns and assorted vegetable tempura, enveloped in a crisp, lacy batter, accompany the buckwheat noodles, which are sprinkled with strands of black seaweed and served atop a bamboo mat in an exquisite lacquered box.
Among the main courses, succulent salt-broiled mackerel ($12) comes with a trompe l'oeil assemblage of rice paper-thin apple slices, arranged like a peacock's fan tail. But the triumph of the meal is broiled eel ($18); brushed with soy sauce and sweet sake, it tastes almost candied, the caramelized sweetness oozing onto its bed of rice. Some diners are understandably reluctant to try this fish, given its menacing, serpentine appearance in the wild, but fillet of broiled eel resembles merely a benign, splayed sardine. Its flesh is rich, but not oily. There are no bones, and the texture is firm, slightly chewy like trout; its skin is charred, and its taste aromatic, smoky and lingeringly delicious. As if the eel alone were not sufficient, at Sin Ju it's accompanied by wonderfully fresh sashimi.
Eels have been known to perambulate on dry land and even eat sweet-pea pods. Japanese so revere these sweet fish they present them in beautiful boxes as gifts. In Tokyo, 3,000 restaurants make a specialty of eel in every conceivable form, including eel liver soup. Many Japanese eels come from France's Loire River, a nice piece of fishy fusion. Japanese believe that eels improve your love life, and they're frequently dished up to newly married couples for their morning-after breakfast. Sin Ju, alas, is open only for lunch and dinner.
The wait staff here is charming and informative. They pace your dinner with a practiced sense of timing and instinctively know the proper sequence of dishes: We ordered five appetizers, and they came in just the right order--from mild to strong, from cold to hot.
Sin Ju's prices are moderate, but if you're feeling as eminent as an emperor, you could indulge in a pot of aged, chilled sake for a cool $80. If not, there's a fine house pitcher for one-tenth that price. Either way you'll feel positively imperial at this restaurant, where artfulness, not Zen austerity, dictates your pleasure. Whether you slurp your noodles (as you're expected to do even in the most decorous of Japanese settings), or with the chopsticks delicately cradle a salty plum deep in your emerald bowl, you will find yourself soothed and fulfilled at Sin Ju.
1022 NW Johnson St., 223-6535
Open 11:30 am- 2:30 pm Monday-Saturday, 5-9:30 pm Monday- Thursday and Sunday, 5-10:30 pm Friday and Saturday. Credit cards. Children welcome. $$ Moderate.
Cold tofu with ginger green onion sauce, broiled salted yellowtail collar, broiled fillet of eel, sashimi
One of the prettiest interior spaces among all Portland restaurants.
WWeek 2015