Yatai Aberdeen

The real deal

I shared a platform recently with Emeritus Professor Hugh Pennington, the UK authority on food poisoning. He was quick to squash any idea that the catering trade is overburdened with unnecessary regulation, testifying to the pathogenic horrors he has witnessed.

This chimed with media reports of the recent prosecution of an Edinburgh pub, one of those "Two For the Price of One" outfits. Rats in the garlic bread, bought-in food past its use-by date, fridges and stoves encrusted with sinister substances all for £6.99 a head!

As a regular eater out, I worry about my health, and it's not just the prospect of a kidney-knackering burger or a campylobacter-incubating chicken fajita, but also the prevailing imbalance in restaurant food.

Even when you eat out in good, clean restaurants, you generally end up with a meal that is too rich, protein-intensive, lacking in roughage and deficient in fruit and vegetables. Not a problem for the occasional diner, but an occupational hazard for both the liver and the waistline of the restaurant reviewer.

What a delight, then, to discover Yatai in Aberdeen, where the food leaves you feeling better, not worse. Its chef-proprietor, John Jones, has set up in his native city after seven hard years learning how to be a proper Japanese chef.

This is not someone who has a token six months at Yo Sushi on his curriculum vitae, but a young man who has showed the professionalism to clock up a serious training, including stints with Honda Europe, Shun in Tokyo, and the well-respected Zuma in London.

The two-tier restaurant is cute and simple. You see focused chefs working away with extreme concentration in the postage-stamp kitchen out front. The restaurant's mission – which it wholeheartedly delivers – is to serve authentic, informal Japanese food at affordable prices.

The menu is refreshingly daring. You choose from a selection of zensai (small dishes), char-grill skewers, sushi (rice and seaweed rolls) and sashimi (raw fish) that come in waves as they are prepared. On the vegetable front – and this is a brilliant restaurant for vegetarians – we nibbled away on a bowlful of edamame (soy beans), steamed in their pods and sprinkled with rock salt. They tasted like sweet little broad beans and slipped easily from their pods.

Interesting, too, were the half-moon slices of Kabocha squash, glazed in teriyaki sauce, char-grilled and served on fresh shiso leaf, a herb that tastes a bit like mint crossed with parsley and lemon balm.

The menu contains a huge diversity. We were knocked out by the soft-shell crabs in their light-as-a-whisper, dry batter. This came with an eau-de-nil coloured mayonnaise made from capelin roe (a small smelt) and wasabi (horseradish), and a salad of seaweeds, dressed with a garlicky, chilli dressing. Fine lemon sole, encased in excellent tempura batter was partnered by ponzu, a tart dipping sauce made from rice wine and vinegar, seaweed flakes and Japanese citrus fruits.

Juicy, chunky tempura prawns were spectacularly good when anointed with their slightly sweet, gingery dip. You really pick up the flavour and texture nuances of fish in sashimi. Ours featured small prawns, yellowtail and tuna. Succulent eel worked well given a sushi treatment, wrapped in sticky rice and nori seaweed.

Representing the carnivore choice, skewers of crusty warm pork belly with a miso mustard sauce were a triumph while chilled rare rib beef with chilli ponzu was clean-cut and classic. There is no stodgy carbohydrate padding on the evening menu, no redundant makeweight ingredients. Even desserts – we had an unusual green tea ice-cream with a restrained sweetness and a sorbet of raspberries flavoured with ume shu (plum wine) – are easy on the stomach.

Yatai is light on the wallet too, especially when you consider the cost of its lovely raw ingredients. It represents a big leap forward, not just for Aberdeen, but for Scotland.

©Sunday Herald