Recently I went to Hajime, the new fusion Japanese restaurant at Edades Towers at Rockwell Center. I had some excellent kare-kare with rice and a bit of leftover chicken—not in the restaurant but at home to fill the void in what was probably the most wretched, abysmal restaurant experience I had in Manila.

Since it might seem evident which direction this assessment is headed, let me address the issue that Hajime is in its early days, the stage at which I go to most restaurants.
This is when a review is most useful to people who want to know whether a new establishment is worth visiting; it is also the most relevant for the chef and the owners, who can then know what to work on. As I constantly reiterate, I want restaurants to succeed, and I take no joy in bashing a newly opened place.

But I am also a customer, and the prices at Hajime are anything but soft: for three persons we spent a few centavos short of P10,000—and this was a mid-priced degustation with a moderately priced bottle of wine split among us. As a duty to humanity, I will let no man, woman, or child, not my fiercest critic nor my worst enemy, be subjected to such an outright clean-out of one’s wallet or the ignominy of walking out hungrier than you were upon coming in.

Unnecessary pomp

The first course was an egg, or rather, half an egg. It was the kind of half an egg that you might find in your ramen, except it had been fished out and served with unnecessary pomp on a Japanese ceramic bowl on an equally superfluous bed of radish.

Indeed, it came sprinkled with (undetectable) truffle oil and a few granules of lumpfish caviar, but it’s basically a cold, uninspired mouthful, dried out from its stint in the refrigerator. And that was it.

The second course was pumpkin soup, served in a Japanese sake cup. I understand that fusion cuisine results in some less than savory concoctions, but this wasn’t one of them. It was, inexplicably, a perfectly ordinary pumpkin soup made with a chicken base, but served with a few crumbled bits of around a third, say, of a Japanese rice cracker—since actually serving a whole one might be considered going overboard with generosity.

The third and fourth courses arrived at the same time, so without referring back to the menu card I wasn’t really sure which was third and fourth; the simultaneousness also managed to completely undermine the entire concept of a degustation.

Strengths

Here the restaurant seemed to show its strengths, because both the aburi sushi (fatty salmon seared with a blowtorch, first popularized in the country by Inagiku at the Makati Shangri-La), and the portion of A5 grade wagyu beef on a bed of risotto were quite good, if extremely meager.

What it seemed to indicate was that there was at least one chef in the kitchen who could cook, quite decently at that; even the best wagyu takes some skill to sear properly, and the aburi sushi, all two pieces, were as good as any I’ve had.

The pairing with a risotto would have been mildly innovative if it had been good risotto, rather than the gloop you find on a lettuce leaf at the upper left hand of your tray in Philippine Airlines’ economy class.

With a feeling reminiscent of Frodo contemplating the gates of Mordor, our group settled down for the last course—a macaron beside a scoop of ice cream. This dessert could have been assembled from a quick trip to the stalls in the Power Plant Mall basement.

In all, I had eaten about as much as I would have at a cocktail party; and anyone who knows me knows I’m terrible at cocktail parties because I can’t remember anyone’s name.

In my state of hunger I began to hallucinate the scent of juicy, dry-aged steaks emerging from Mamou around the corner, of the kare-kare at Wooden Spoon, and of creamy shirako on toast at Mecha Uma, which is what Hajime could aspire to be with the right chef.

No concept

Although I grit my teeth at the memory of paying for that experience, taking the long view I have to wonder what the owners and chef of the restaurant are attempting to do; it’s a beautiful, well-lit space in search of an identity. Most restaurants these days have to profess some sort of concept, especially if they are opening in a commercial space. Hajime has almost none at all; it’s Japanese with a twist of skulduggery.

There are some restaurants that need time to iron out kinks to flesh out their concept, but this isn’t one of them. With the kindest of intentions I suggest that Hajime’s owners go back to the drawing board and figure out what they want to do before proceeding any further.

And I suggest to the readers of this paper to stay well away until Hajime has improved, and I would be very happy to revise my estimation. Never before have I paid so much to have eaten so little and so badly.

Hajime is at Edades Tower, Rockwell Center, Makati City; tel. 6258824