Kintan – Japanese Barbecue Review

One afternoon while wandering London, with a hungry belly, I came across restaurant chain I’d been meaning to visit for a while, reinterpreting Korean barbecue with a Japanese twist in the heart of Holborn area.  A well presented and friendly staff had us seated at our table letting us know what were the specials of the day, where we were pleasantly surprised that their Happy Hour was virtually all day long, potentially dangerous if you wanted to embrace the Salary man concept with a little sake, a little plum wine and a whole lot of beer.

Seated in the comfortable leather booths, in the middle of the table is a sunken electric grill, where a hotplate is placed, once your order is taken.  We opted for a mixture of red and white meats, along with starters and seafood, each with their own recommended dipping sauce and marinates.

The concept is pretty simple, you read of the menu  what you’d like and the waiting staff brings to your table all the marinated ingredients, where they’ll fire up the electric grill for you and at your own leisure, cook your own meal, with the sizzling aroma of the marinates and meats caramelising in the air.

Kintan

Baked Salmon with Oyster Sauce Glaze and Miso Broth – Recipe

Salmon with cracked pepper, oyster sauce glaze

As much as I love to cook, no one likes to make elaborate meals all the time, so we normally have our “Go-to” recipes that we can rely on, to come home and quickly make, with only 1 pot and 1 baking tray needed to make the dish, it’s all about convenience.
This is one of the recipe that always goes down well, especially since it can be made in 20 minutes from the time you’ve turned the oven on, to when you’re serving up the broth.
What it consists of is a lovely cold soba (buckwheat) noodle bed with a hint of sesame seed oil, which is brilliant if you can only eat gluten free noodles, coupled with the slightly sweet glaze of the oyster sauce, and both dark and light soy sauces, the darker is slightly sweeter, while the lighter is saltier in taste, adding to a balanced flavour to the marinated salmon fillet.
When I cook the salmon, I like to bake it for no longer than 8 minutes, where the flesh is cooked properly on the outside and just done on the inside, a problem that I find some restaurants that over cook the fish or stand the dish under a strong heat lamp,  destroying the texture of the fish.
Contrasting nicely with main hot and cold dish, the umami savouriness of the broth, gives you that happy belly feeling that a broth brings.

Prep time 5 minutes, total cooking time 20 minutes.