Spent the last weekday of my 2week break having a leisurely lunch at Goto. My blog is sorely lacking in updates, because I've just started another month of a super intense posting. The dishes here are prettily presented - so I dragged my fat camera out to take many many photos of the dishes, to do justice to the chef's artistic presentation.
Starter
Starter In the petal shaped cup, there's blanched spinach topped with bonito flakes, and in the white dish, yam with steamed egg. I quite liked the yam with steamed egg, which had a pale purple piece of yam encased within the soft egg custard.
In the front row, I had the fishcake with prawn, stewed eggplant and the Japanese green chilli (that usually comes out during autumn, tastes like a more pleasant version of capsicum), as well as a piece of sweet potato. I tried eating the fern like thing on top of the fish cake, but it's really bitter and I don't think it's edible. The yellow petal on the left isn't edible (I asked the waitress).
Sashimi: Extremely fresh high quality sashimi - we had Hamachi (yellowtail), salmon, hirame (flounder) and scallop. The sashimi was excellent. The wasabi served here is fresh wasabi, and there's also some sliced spring onion mixed with shisho leaf.
Mashed lotus root with eelI've never eaten lotus root in this form before, and I think the chef soakes it in some acidic solution because the lotus root was cream coloured, unlike the oxidized brown looking lotus roots I have with my soup.
The lotus root paste was quite sticky, but light flavour of the lotus root wasn't masked by any other sauces or flavourings.
I think I was taking too long to eat this dish (and snapping photos), because the next dish came out before I was done. Perhaps because it's tempura and it can't sit around waiting.
Tempura: with big prawn, ladies finger, Japanese yam wrapped in shisho leaf, sweet potato strips and pumpkin coated with black sesame seeds. I've only eaten the Japanese yam in the grated form, and it actually has quite a high water concent - it was crunchy, had a slight slimy taste and was juicier tan it looked. The sweet potato tempura was very interesting - thinly sliced strips of sweet potato in a cluster. I wonder how the chef gets the strips to stay together in the deep fryer. I liked the pumpkin which was coated in a thick layer of fragrant black sesame seeds. Instead of the usual tempura dipping sauce, the tempura was served with some special salt (I asked the waitress what it was, and wrote it down, but I lost the piece of paper! :/)
Pickles - which I really didn't enjoy. To begin with, I don't particularly like Japanese pickles and I'll usually just take a bite off the yellow semicircular ones. I think the chef makes these pickles himself, so they aren't very salty. But they have this aftertaste which I really don't like. I did try to eat the pickled daikon but I really couldn't bring myself finish the pink pickle. The cabbage-leaf like pickle at the back was pretty bland, but crunchy.
Glutinous rice topped with chestnuts, ginko nuts and sprinkled with white sesame seeds. The glutious rice didn't have the oily taste or feeling, and the chestnuts had a delicate taste. 
Miso soup served together with the pickles and glutinous rice.
Pickles - which I really didn't enjoy. To begin with, I don't particularly like Japanese pickles and I'll usually just take a bite off the yellow semicircular ones. I think the chef makes these pickles himself, so they aren't very salty. But they have this aftertaste which I really don't like. I did try to eat the pickled daikon but I really couldn't bring myself finish the pink pickle. The cabbage-leaf like pickle at the back was pretty bland, but crunchy.
Glutinous rice topped with chestnuts, ginko nuts and sprinkled with white sesame seeds. The glutious rice didn't have the oily taste or feeling, and the chestnuts had a delicate taste. Miso soup served together with the pickles and glutinous rice.The waitress also gives us another kind of tea to drink once she served this dish. It tastes like chinese tea, but is not bitter at all. Perhaps it's supposed to aid digestion or something?
Trio of desserts - my favourite being the brown sugar ice cream. I like brown sugar and gula melaka lots, so I tried to make the little scoop of ice cream last longer by scraping at it and savouring its taste.
The fruits were garnished with a red autumn leaf (wonder where the chef gets it from?) which I didn't eat cos the last time I tried eating some red colour leaf it was really bitter and gross. Milk pudding came in a shot glass and was nice and creamy, but mine was more of a viscous liquid rather than a pudding.
I think I liked the dishes I had here the previous time better than the dishes I had during this lunch. Probably because I don't like some of the items on the menu (especially the PICKLES). Or maybe because I had much higher expectations this time compared to my first visit. It's $75 nett for a 6 course set lunch, and the chef chooses the dishes - so there's no menu. Good in that you'll be pleasantly suprised, and bad if you don't like eating certian dishes.
Trio of desserts - my favourite being the brown sugar ice cream. I like brown sugar and gula melaka lots, so I tried to make the little scoop of ice cream last longer by scraping at it and savouring its taste.The fruits were garnished with a red autumn leaf (wonder where the chef gets it from?) which I didn't eat cos the last time I tried eating some red colour leaf it was really bitter and gross. Milk pudding came in a shot glass and was nice and creamy, but mine was more of a viscous liquid rather than a pudding.I think I liked the dishes I had here the previous time better than the dishes I had during this lunch. Probably because I don't like some of the items on the menu (especially the PICKLES). Or maybe because I had much higher expectations this time compared to my first visit. It's $75 nett for a 6 course set lunch, and the chef chooses the dishes - so there's no menu. Good in that you'll be pleasantly suprised, and bad if you don't like eating certian dishes.
Hopefully, I'll be able to try their super expensive dinner in the near future... perhaps I will once I start working (and have no time to go on a holiday).
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