THAT The Central, the new mall above the Clarke Quay MRT station, is designed to mimic a Japanese mall is no secret. The maze-like corridors leading to small shops selling niche clothing brands remind one of many similar malls in Tokyo and Osaka.

Still, I was surprised to find five spanking new Japanese restaurants, all in a row on the third floor, on my first visit to the mall last week.

Each had a different concept, from a tiny ramen outlet to a couple of casual eateries to one that specialises in pork dishes.

Another four Japanese restaurants are supposed to open soon, two on the same level and one each on levels one and two.

The existing eateries all looked tempting, but I was in an adventurous mood that night, and – flipping through its menu at the entrance – Sho-U promised to be the most exciting. And it was.

Through a red passageway, I entered an all-black room which, in turn, led to an all-white room. The walls, floor, tables, chairs and lighting – even the fabric sakura stuck on the walls – followed the colour schemes in each room.

There were three private rooms as well, as I found out from the waitress who offered to give me a tour while I waited for my dessert.

Two were red, but the most interesting was an all-white cubby hole for two persons called the Love Cove hidden right at the back of the labyrinthine restaurant.

The restaurant’s interior was designed by Colin Seah of Ministry of Design, who won one of last year’s Designer of the Year awards for his interior design of The New Majestic Hotel.

And the sakura installations were the work of Singaporean artist Lee Meiling.

Which restaurateur would have the artistic vision for such a visually striking eatery, I wondered.

The surprising answer was Apex Pal International, which owns the Sakai Sushi chain of outlets and the upmarket Hibiki restaurant in Legends at Fort Canning.
 
Its creative concept was not limited to design; the menu was equally inventive.
 
Classified as modern Japanese, it threw together different food cultures. The results were not always successful, but the dishes were intriguing.

Take the steamed duck breast ($20), which came with a tart yuzu dip. The meat was palatable and not as tough as I had anticipated.

The unagi tofu steak ($16) was even more successful, with the soft eel and the smooth tofu making good bedfellows. The flavour came from a sweet teriyaki sauce that was drizzled over it, and it was served warm so that the eel did not taste too fishy.

Another dish, the foie gras brown rice ($22, above), sounded like an oxymoron.

Why mix a health food like brown rice with sinful goose liver? But when the dish came,  understood. It was for the contrast between the slightly chewy rice and the melt-in-the-mouth liver. It didn’t hurt, either, that the foie gras gave the rice a wonderful fragrance.

ut there were other dishes that tasted weird.

One was the healthy soba ($12), which looked very pretty with the buckwheat noodles encircled by a colourful palate of ingredients such as pickled radish, chopped ladies fingers, seaweed flakes and a bright yellow raw egg yolk. But the slimy fermented soy beans turned me off.

Then, there was the spicy strawberry sherbet ($7), which tasted as if it had been infused with chilli padi, totally masking the strawberry flavour.

Being adventurous is fine. But food is still about pleasing the palate, after all.
 
SHO-U
Where: The Central, 6 Eu Tong Sen Street
#03-85/102/108/109
Tel: 6534-8066
Opens: 11.30am to 10pm
Food: *** ½
Service: *** ½
Ambience: ****
Price: Budget from $80 per person