Osaka

We have been wanting to try Osaka for the longest time and either couldn't get a reservation or felt like we needed to wait for an event to go there for dinner. So, when we found out that our good friends Paul and Anso were moving away from Argentina, we had reason, motive and reservations to go. It was well worth the wait.

Osaka (Solar 5608, Palermo, 4775-6964) is an Asian/Peruvian fusion restaurant with a sushi bar to boot. They highly recommend reservations, and you can only make said reservation between 10am & 6pm Mon - Fri. This is far more structured than the Buenos Aires restaurant community that I'm used to, but something is working for them because they are constantly full. (Note: We have two sets of friends that said they walked in without a reservation and both were able to get dinner. Each only had 2 people in their group and were seated at the sushi bar as opposed to a table, but both had an amazing time, so there is hope for the walk-in customer.)

They have a large menu that is divided by style of food, Peruvian, Asian dishes and sushi. I can't tell you much more about the menu because we didn't even use it, we took our friend's advice and asked the waitress to bring us an assortment of ceviches and sushi dishes, and requested that at least some of them contain cooked food for the pregnant lady. This was definitely the way to go, everything we ate was delicious.

There is no getting around the Buenos Aires-style sushi rolls that inevitably contain salmon, cream cheese and avocado, and though some find that boring, we really like the flavor so, who's complaining? Osaka was no different, as you can see, our first round of sushi contained just that. They added some cellophane noodles to the top just for kicks, but underneath it was the same old sushi roll.

They gave us a few dishes of thinly sliced fish, salmon and a type of white fish, adored with different sauces. The salmon had a citric flare and was topped with chives, which was good but a little sweet. The white fish had a soy and hoisin sauce base and was to die for. It was so good that I failed to get a photo of it, even though we were given 2 dishes of the same style fish - we ate it that quickly. You can see some of the remaining sauce in the foreground.

The next round was a cooked salmon dish, the salmon was rolled in sesame seeds and served with a potato salad. It was good, but not incredibly memorable. The ceviche was a mixture of traditional ceviche, avocado style and wasabi, all of which were delicious. And they were served on these adorable little amuse bouche spoons for the perfect little bite sized tastes. At this point, we told the waitress that we didn't need any additional items, and she was happy to comply. I'm certainly that they would have continued to present delicious dish after dish, and we probably would have continued to eat, but there was dessert to be had - and it was a good decision to save room.

The recommended dessert (as far as I'm concerned) was the warm chocolate cake. I can't remember if it's called chocolate volcano or whatever on the menu, but it is a chocolate cake with an oozing chocolate middle served with cinnamon ice cream. To die for. I was super jealous that I did not order one for myself - I will certainly do so when we return.

Instead, I ordered the sorbet sampler, which was my attempt to be a healthy dessert-eater. They were good, interesting flavors of basil and ginger in there, but really didn't hold a candle to the chocolate cake. As I write this I'm wishing I could have one of those chocolate cakes right now...

I actually don't remember what dessert Paul ordered, but I love his face in this photo. It's like "Seriously, I have to wait to eat my dessert for a picture?!". He's right, I'm pretty annoying to go out to dinner with these days, I can't drink, no raw food and I insist on taking pictures of your food. They are good friends for dealing with my antics.

So there you have it, Osaka lives up to the year-long hype. I recommend going when you are not pregnant so that you can indulge fully, which we plan to do again in a couple of months. I am no expert on Peruvian food, but from what others tell me, this is more authentic than some of the other fusion restaurants in the city.  If there is any negative to this place it was that the service was good, not great, and it took an eternity to get our bill.

It was a great farewell dinner for some wonderful friends. Au revoir, Anso and Paul! We look forward to our paths crossing when we visit you in beautiful Paris!