Momotaro brings Japan's greatest hits to West Loop

CHICAGO (WLS) -- One of Chicago's most successful restaurant groups has opened its first Japanese restaurant, and it's already among the best in town.

With a string of successes like Girl and the Goat, GT Fish and Oyster and Boka, Rob Katz and Kevin Boehm seem to know what we want to eat, before we know ourselves. Their latest project - in the West Loop of course - brings together Japan's greatest hits, from sushi to charcoal grilling.

Like any new restaurant in the West Loop, the heat factor at Momotaro has been pretty high for the last month or so. But it has as much to do with the quality of the food, as it does with the buzz. Named for a Japanese tomato, it has come to represent one of the restaurant's signature dishes.

"We basically dehydrate it, the tomato, then rehydrate it with traditionally, actually, French flavors, to mimic beef tartar," said Chef Mark Hellyar.

And that sense of savoriness pervades this tartare, which fools you into thinking it's beef. More traditional Japanese cooking occurs on the robata grill, fed by blazing hot binchotan charcoal.

"It's more of a dormant heat, it's a high heat too - at about 1,000 degrees - but a lot less smoke and a lot less flare-up," said Hellyar. "We're doing tongue, chicken hearts. Spring and summer we'll see a variety of vegetables as well."

There's also prawns and bacon-wrapped quail eggs; each arriving with a dab of either Japanese mustard, some fermented yuzu paste or a lemon dusted in shichimi peppers.

Out in the main dining room, the sushi chef commands your attention. Sashimi is deftly sliced into manageable pieces, often arranged artfully with signposts, making selection easy. The nigiri is just as impressive - thanks to perfectly-seasoned rice - and the nice thing (for purists at least), is the absence of clich maki rolls.

"I think the emphasis was to get away from maki actually, so we could feature the quality of the fish more so than a mixture of fish rolled up into a vehicle," he said.

Momotaro

820 W. Lake St.

(312) 733-4818

http://www.momotarochicago.com/