Sachi Dining, Taman Tun Dr Ismail ~ Ex-Cook

Scarcely two months old, Sachi has fast become KL's most acclaimed new destination for Japanese dining, serving just 10 guests each evening in Taman Tun Dr Ismail, specialising in the craft of contemporary kaiseki.

But Sachi's success has been a decade in the making - its founding chef Akira Sono initially earned recognition as the winner for Tokyo in 2013's Japanese Food Youth Championship. The Tokyo native has since steadily honed his talents. Malaysians might recognise him from as early as 2014, when he was a linchpin of Sushi Oribe's launching team, but his resume also includes stints at Shangri-La Singapore's NAMI.

Flanking him at Sachi is another familiar figure, Hiroshima-born Haruki Fujikawa, who tended bar in Tokyo and New York before helming the now-closed Iki-Ya in Empire Damansara in 2018. Their team includes skilled, passionate chefs who master intricate styles of cooking and plating, blending traditional techniques with twenty-first-century artistry.

Sachi isn't an omakase restaurant in KL's conventional sense.

Its menu changes every season but stays consistent through those months. The current winter menu is available for one more week before the spring selection takes over 15 February.

It serves no sushi, weaving instead through nearly a dozen kaiseki courses that span starters to soup to sashimi, simmered to sweet creations, many in surprising synergy: Japanese fruit tomatoes filled with snow crab and sweet prawn? Freshly mashed monkfish liver stuffed into monaka-style wafers? Shirako tempura paired with Yamagata's famed La France pear?

Through it all, a sense of beauty and balance prevails. Seafood is prepared with respect, mindfully grilled to ensure that tilefish is compellingly textured, from the crunch of its scales to the lusciousness of its flesh, meticulously matched so that oil-marinated oysters find complementary harmony with deep-fried dried sardines.

There's no shortage of sumptuousness, from Himi handmade udon with baby scallops, mushrooms and egg yolk to Japanese wagyu beef draped over Koshihikari short-grain rice with sea urchin, salmon roe and burdock chips. Even a seemingly simple sashimi course of maguro, buri and isaki is sterling, showcasing supple, succulent cuts at their peak.

If you're seeking the next step in the evolution of Japanese dining in KL, Sachi offers a tantalising peek into the potential future. The venue itself is primed for further changes, with plans for a bar upstairs later this year. For now, it's a distinctive experience from the moment we step in, seeing Akira-san brew his own fresh dashi broth with a heap of katsuobushi.

Here is Sachi's winter menu, offered only for about one more week: