Our Favourite Japanese Prawns at Kaihomaru, Starhill Gallery

My loyal readers would remember my favourite Japanese prawns. If you're new here, you can read my raves about them here and here. But before you rush out of the house to Tykoh Inagiku, my post here is all about saying goodbye to my favourite prawns since they were closing down the restaurant. *big audible sigh*

However, since we had developed quite a friendship with the chef (and also because I have a smart sister who took down his phone number so that we could keep in touch), we managed to track the chef at his new job in Kaihomaru, Starhill Gallery. 

For the record, I should also state that I managed to track most of their skilled staff at Hanare in Doubletree Hilton - but their butter prawns just weren't the same as the scrumptious ones we had in Inagiku. But superb service from the ex-Inagiku waitresses who served us that night - they even remembered Hubby and I and made an effort to greet us warmly.

Anyway, our hunt for the perfect butter prawns was far from over. My sister eventually arranged for all of us to eat at Kaihomaru with specific instructions for the chef to be the Abang that served us in Inagiku. We decided to combine it with my youngest sister's birthday celebration - she turns 15 this year!

Kaihomaru is on the Relish floor of the Starhill Gallery. Why can't Stahill stick to the traditional Ground floor, 1st floor... you get my drift! I find their floor naming sequence very confusing, especially if you're not sure which floor the Relish is and contemplating between taking the elevator if it's on the higher floors, or just scaling the escalators if its just one floor up. I remember the days when Starhill Gallery was just called Starhill and was less complicated. I used to walked from my school across the street, into Starhill for my weekly piano lessons at Yamaha at the top floor. Aaahhhh those were the days. I digress!

That night we parked valet at JW Marriott and walked over into Starhill Gallery and took the elevator to Relish. We were running quite late so everyone had arrived and were well into their second course. Everyone was seated around the Teppanyaki area but since we were the last to arrive, we had to squeeze ourselves into a very tight corner on the far end of the iron plate. Definitely not comfortable!

Fried garlic slices! Bless the chef, he remembered our favourites!

Since we had to catch up with the rest of the courses, the chef placed both the salmon and the buttered prawns in one serving.

A close up.

My take on it? The butter sauce on the prawns is as good as the ones in Inagiku. But! (Yes, there is a but!) The size of the prawn was extremely disappointing. See those two dollops of butter sauce on the right? That's covering the flesh of the prawn. Even the head and the tail of the prawn shows how small the prawn was. I think the chef also underestimated the number of people coming, hence he did not make enough butter sauce for extra helpings or to be mixed with the fried rice (as we usually would do).

Other than that, everything was as tasty as it should be. The salmon, the fried rice, even the matcha (green tea) ice-cream evoked memories of our favourite dishes at Inagiku.

The chef preparing our favourite fried rice.

My sisters. The one on the right was the birthday girl of the night.

I was quite impressed with this. The chef actually wrote this upside down (facing us)!

Aiden was not quite done with his scoop of matcha ice-cream.

Posing after the very good dinner. Aiden showing off his full tummy!

Brought my Chanel for its maiden trip out. 

I'm going to make it a point to have a family dinner here again - just the four of us! And I am going to make sure I get huge prawns and extra butter sauce. So stay tuned for another review, okay?