Matthew Burbidge
Food
After a successful year WagaMama’s has changed its name to Kuchikomi and now – taking a deep breath – have launched their summer menu.
Along with the name change, Kuchikomi, which is apparently Japanese for “word of mouth” has had to reinvent itself with a fresh coat of paint and new food.
The menu is lighter, cooler and less fattening: there are yoghurt and citrus dressings instead of creamy sauces, chilled soups and salad with fruit, as well as fresh fruit nigiri with a coconut sauce.
There are also new Latin bread wraps – kind of like a thin roti – with garlic beef, vegetables or seafood.
A helpful addition to the menu is dietary breakdowns (protein, fat, carbohydrates) as footnotes to the menu items. The restaurant is also vegetarian-friendly and meals are clearly marked as such.
There has been a lot of fuss lately about so-called fusion food – the idea being the pairing of ingredients not normally found on the same plate. This is all too often used as an excuse to chuck everything into a dish, leaving the meal cluttered and the original ingredient overwhelmed. To be really successful the recipe needs to be pared down to just one or two carefully chosen ingredients that will work well together.
In this case, the cuisine is Japanese, but with ingredients that are at home on the South African palate.
According to Hayley Napier, the store’s manager, the fusion concept works so well among the unadventurous South African diners because they are lured by the familiar and then charmed by the foreign flavours.
People who usually wouldn’t go near a place where they serve raw fish are now being tempted with morsels like yuppi maki – a roll of rice, smoked salmon, cream cheese and lettuce; or you can even have cooked sushi.
Napier says that many South Africans have come to expect meat at every meal – and will look forlornly on a plate of vegetables – so it should come as no surprise that one of the more popular menu items is a grilled fillet of beef with jalapeo chilli sauce in a ramen noodle soup.
Diners will remember when the restaurant opened its doors there was some controversy over the name – which was unmistakably similar to a famous noodle restaurant in London.
There were murmurs of litigation, but now the whole crisis has been averted with the name change. However, the letters WM still appear on the door of the restaurant – but they now stand for word-of-mouth.
Besides, the original WagaMama’s is said to be opening shop in Cape Town and Kuchikomi have their eye on three more outlets – one in Menlyn Park, Pretoria, another in at Montecasino and believe it or not, Sydney, Australia.
“They [the owners] came to an agreement – so now we can go international,” said Pearce.
On a recent visit to the Sandton outlet, my dining companion and I tried the brinjal, tomato and pepper tower with noodles and a sweet balsamic sauce and the vegetable island – which is an unadorned vegetable curry in a yoghurt and coconut sauce.
Both dishes were satisfying, if a little bland – the dark smoky udon noodles were outstanding – although it proved a challenge to eat the curry with chopsticks.
Inexplicably, there was no pyramid mystery – spun sugar caramelised into a pyramid with chocolate ice cream and pistachio shavings – or meringue and mousse tower – although both items were on the menu – so we chose the blond chocolate brownie and a comforting dish of angel hair pasta with cinnamon, sugar and nuts.
The restaurant is never quiet; besides being set in the middle of the Sandton mall, inside waiters stream everywhere and there is an army of Asian sushi chefs with itchy fingers behind the glass counters. In the midst of this humdrum it’s a great comfort to be treated to a discreet back massage by Kuchikomi’s very own, contemporary geisha.
Kuchikomi can be found in Sandton City. Tel: (011) 784 5820 for bookings