Took advantage of a short trip to Taipei to try out Nobuo.
I posted about Eika here recently and thought it maybe interesting to also share my experience at Nobuo given they are both op and coming Japanese/Taiwanese influenced places.
Please note my wife and I have lived extensively in Japan, Taiwan and France – but everyone can have a different sensitivity to the food so it is a personal opinion here.
In short, it felt Nobuo is a solid 1* but not a lot more than that during our visit. Everything was good and well executed but not much to remember particularly.
Reservation: not too hard, there were a few slots within our window about 2 weeks ahead, albeit on weekday.
Atmosphere: quite classic fine dining setting. Kitchen is fully open to the dining room similarly to Eika. Likely in reference to Taiwan street restaurants.
Service: ok. A bit rushed and mechanical, like typical waiter spitting out a well rehearsed speech. Not very personable. We got service in mandarin but best get it in English as these are the only tables the chef gave explanation/spoke to.
Meal started quite late, 40min after the set time – likely because they wanted to wait for patrons who were (extremely) late…
Food: (note I inverted the order the first dish is photo 2 and the 2nd photo 1)
Started with a sashimi, which was ok, but nothing particular other than having to eat it with a fork and knife. Not the strongest way to start a course. No wine from the pairing served yet.
White asparagus with yolk gel and abalone, over the same sauce as the sashimi. Abalone was excellent as well as the yolk gel, unfortunately it is impossible to tell if you didn’t decompose the dish to eat the parts separately: the asparagus was overpowering the subtle flavors of the abalone and the gel. It would have been excellent if not for this lack of balance.
Scallop, smoked. Unclear what the contribution of the goji berries was, didn’t understand the dish but it was good.
Scallop mousse – basically a quenelle made of scallops which was interesting and quite good.
Prawn – probably the strongest dish of the course the fennel/celery did enhance the dish despite the fact I usually hate these. Served over a sweet and sour whey based sauce. Excellent.
Tai fish with spring onion sauce, good
Wagyu (add on for 600 NT) – surprised and confused by the hotaru ika on top, it did bring some brine flavor, kind of like adding oyster on top of steak, but confused. The steak itself was good and especially the onion sauce accompanying it was excellent.
Quail (wife dish with no add on) – probably a better pic than the steak. Very well executed. Served with a sweet and sour sauce and paired with cherries, the drawback is at this stage it is getting a bit tiring to eat sweet and sour stuff.
Curry – the rice was really excellent. The curry itself was very sweet with flavor of toffee/chocolate. Felt almost like a caramel sauce. Not really our cup of tea.
Apricot with mozzarella and strawberries sauce – like a caprese basically, a bit confusing.
Black beans crème brĂ»lĂ©e – good!
Mignardise: cannelé (anecdotal), egg cake with a runny yolk like vanilla custard (excellent), melon daifuku (ok)
Drinks: took the 5 wine pairing, not much to write home about, it was fairly generic except maybe for the Taiwanese wines and the sake.
Overall it was a good, solid one star experience, essentially mostly french with Japanese / Taiwanese ingredients. Almost half the price of Eika, but not comparable places. That said if I really had to compare, Eika is clearly a league above in terms of concept, atmosphere and overall execution.
All in all recommend Nobuo for a straight to the point classic one star experience with a north East Asian twist.
by Stump007