A Montreal Omakase Sushi Restaurant Just Opened & It really is Influenced By Cirque Du Soleil

When Takuya Matsuda was an up-and-coming sushi chef living in California, he stated he invested a large amount of time in Las Vegas. It was there, at a Cirque du Soleil display, exactly where he arrived up with the idea for his new Montreal restaurant, Okeya Kyujiro, which opened downtown for get-out on Friday.

Component sushi place and part theatre, Okeya Kyujiro claims to be an practical experience in contrast to everything the city’s ever viewed — or tasted — before. 

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Whilst other Montreal sushi dining places offer you ‘omakase’ fashion support at precise periods or in addition to other menu things, this is the very first a single that is just ‘omakase’ — a set menu, chef’s decision, by reservation only. 

When indoor dining resumes, the program is to do two sittings for every evening, each individual for 10 folks, just about every two several hours extended, and just about every consisting of a 20-training course food.  

We spoke to Matsuda, who’s both of those owner and chef, to come across out additional about his interesting addition to the nearby food items scene.

The Concept

Some people today could not see the relationship in between sushi and Cirque du Soleil, but Chef Matsuda helps make it distinct as he remembers the practical experience of observing a Cirque du Soleil general performance. 

“I was so impressed,” he says.

“I [didn’t] genuinely fully grasp English but they don’t talk so every person all about the environment can enjoy it. I was pondering that sushi and Japanese foodstuff is [a] sort of entertainment too.” 

For starters, Chef Matsuda tells us that food stuff is a way for him to deliver Japanese culture to other components of the globe. Like Cirque du Soleil, there is a universality to food stuff that bypasses language limitations.

Then, there is certainly the efficiency facet. By cooking in entrance of shoppers, Chef Matsuda suggests he wishes dining out — when it is doable yet again — to be a spectacle. 

“We treatment for the equipment, we care for the uniform, we care for the songs. Overall coordinat[ion],” he claims. 

He strategies to put in a display screen or curtain, he suggests, that will rise when the show aka dinner company starts. 

He also refers to his employees as his solid.

His “functionality staff” includes Madame Sake, an global sake sommelier who many Montrealers will acknowledge from her workshops and tastings around city. 

“And we may perhaps have a ninja. My hometown is pretty famed for ninjas,” he whispers.

“If I’m a ninja, I’m not going to notify you.”

The Food stuff

One more advantage of cooking in entrance of buyers, Chef Matsuda describes, is included freshness. 

Rice will be cooked, dashi broth will go from stock to soup, new ginger and wasabi will be grated, and sesame seeds will be roasted — all in front of the buyer, using classic Japanese tools, served correct away.   

“That odor, it’s much far better,” he states. 

“Also, food stuff is incredibly … visual … so we try out to demonstrate everything in front of the customer.” 

Even bamboo leaf garnishes will be carved into suave designs prior to customers’ eyes, a Japanese apply identified as sasa-giri. 

Each meal support will conclude with a tea ceremony, suggests Chef Matsuda, employing natural tea equipped by his mom and dad — tea traders back in Japan. 

The Chef 

Matsuda, an award-successful executive sushi chef who’s labored in the foods field for much more than 20 yrs, comes to Montreal through Toronto and Vancouver.

Prior to that, he lived in Los Angeles, San Diego and Osaka, though his hometown is Mie Prefecture, Japan.

As Chef Matsuda factors to distinct aspects of his cafe, two issues stand out.

A single: The person enjoys his knives.

Two: Every single factor has been hand-picked with really like, significantly of it courtesy of artisans he’s fulfilled on his path to the existing.

He tells us only 20 people today in Japan can make his handmade rice steamer basket — a waitlist two months extensive.

The charcoal he utilizes for grilling and cigarette smoking, kishu-bonchotan, is supposedly the most expensive in the earth and challenging for even Michelin-starred Japanese chefs to get.

“[But] I have a relationship,” he describes. 

The Japanese characters on his emblem have been drawn by his pal, a monk, and his intricately painted Ko-Imari porcelain plate was built by the father of his pal who operates Utsuwa-No-Yakata, a Japanese Tableware retail store in Vancouver. 

As he places it, “I have a large amount of buddies.” 

Personable as he is, you may want to befriend Chef Matsuda ought to you ever take in at his cafe. But you should not get way too chatty throughout dinner.

“[The] chef make[s] meals. Has to concentrate on cooking,” he suggests. “If a client asks us to consume some sake or a little something, this is not professional. Drink and cooking doesn’t work.”

You should not be concerned. Sake servers dressed in kimonos, he suggests, will reveal what he is accomplishing in excess of the microphone.   

Chef Matsuda might be starting up Okeya Kyujiro in Montreal (and, indeed, he suggests it really is partially due to it being the residence of Cirque du Soleil) but he tells us he has significant designs to open up restaurants all close to the planet. 

Numerous restaurants start off in Toronto or Vancouver then arrive to Montreal, but he suggests he wishes his cafe to be the other way all around with Quebec as its headquarters. 

He by now has designs to open a next place in Vancouver this summer months and is aiming to open up in Toronto in 2022.

Okeya Kyujiro

Value: 💸💸💸

Cuisine: Sushi 

Tackle: 1227, rue de la Montagne, Montreal, Quebec

Facts: Open up 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. for consider-out bento boxes whilst curfew is in influence. Pre-get. When indoor eating resumes, there will be two sittings per day by reservation only. 

Why You Want To Go: Top rated-tier sushi served in a Cirque du Soleil influenced environment to delight all your senses — your opportunity to experience conventional Japanese omakase in Montreal!