Umami’s chef let us into the kitchen to see how they work with hard-to-find fresh sea urchin

A tray of large, spidery bulbs sits on the counter in the kitchen at Umami Japanese Bistro. It doesn’t look appetizing yet, but the dark-colored spiky spheres will soon be one of the most sought-after Japanese small plates: fresh sea urchin.

In early July, chef Cong Nguyen imported a small supply from Santa Barbara, California. Usually the meat, called uni, comes to restaurants frozen, already harvested from the shells.

Fresh sea urchin with their poisonous spiny shells intact require an expert hand.

Nguyen cuts through the shells with kitchen scissors and scoops out the buttery meat delicately, careful it doesn’t tear or break. The bright yellow uni tastes sweet and briny, with a creamy consistency some love and others find off-putting.

For Umami’s preparation, Nguyen swishes the uni in a bowl of iced salt water to clean it. The empty sea urchin shells are filled with white Daikon radish before being topped with a Japanese mint leaf, then the uni. Next comes salmon roe and pickled wasabi, all finished with a small pipe-pen filled with a house-made Japanese vinaigrette.

The dish is as much a work of art as it is a meal, Nguyen says. “This is something not a lot of people get to experience. It’s something I like to experience myself—the preparing part.”

Eat at Umami

umamibr.com
3930 Burbank Drive
(225) 768-8808

Hours:
Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m.
Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m.
Sunday, 4-9:30 p.m.

This article was originally published in the September 2016 issue of 225 Magazine.