The award-winning owner-chef Fujimoto Yoshiaki was borned and raised in Osaka. After 11 years at Hotel Nikko Osaka's French restaurant Les Celebrites, the Osaka native ventured out and opened Différence on his own in 2013 and a year later, he was already awarded with his first Michelin star.
My first impression of Différence was a very good one. I love the ground-floor dining room for its sleek and compact design and their no-choice prix fixe menu also promises plenty of surprises.
If there's one thing that needed improvement here, it's the ability of their waitstaff to communicate in English. With so many unique ingredients in Chef Yoshiaki's surprise menu, it would've been great if his team could explain everything in greater lengths but unfortunately, that wasn't happening. So I guess we just had to rely on our palates tonight.
The amuse bouche was pretty much ready as soon as we were seated and it was a pair of interesting nibbles - boiled Japanese sand eel with herb powder on the left and a small cabbage ham eel roll on the right.
We were presented with a small clip to pick the sand eel out of the broth. Interesting experience (let's not talk about the taste).
The cabbage roll was a lot simpler to handle as we could just eat it with our fork. We were told to put some of those herb powder on the cabbage roll. Wow, very earthy flavors coming from the herbs but not much coming from the ham and eel at all.
After what turned out to be a rather weird experience from the 2 "unique" nibbles, things finally got back to "normal" terms. Our first starter was crab meat served with leek jelly, crab sauce and some edible flowers. It was neatly complemented by some yogurt ice.
I liked the texture of this dish. The crab meat was nice and the leek jelly along with the yogurt ice provided just enough contrasting flavors for the crab to make it enjoyable (6/10).
Next up we had 2 small nibbles again, first a tuna tartare with olive oil which was very rich in flavor. That was followed by a less successful turnip dish with turnip leaf, custard egg and egg powder (5/10).
More seafood was thrown our way, this time with a marriage of scallop and sweetbread. That's an odd combination although it turned out to be fine. The scallop was lightly seared and it was served with cauliflower that was prepared 3 ways: sautéed, boiled and shaved.
If that's not enough flavors for you, don't worry coz they have also added some caramelized persimmon and a super rich oyster sauce to the mix (6/10).
Our pasta dish was next. Underneath the squid-ink pasta, we had some sautéed lobster with lobster sauce. Some Indian-spiced deer fawn and shaved conte cheese were used to provide the finishing touch.
I thought the lobster was really good. Excellent texture and the sauce was rich and creamy. But the squid-ink pasta was kind of disappointing (5/10).
Interestingly enough, they slipped a foie gras in between our pasta and fish course. No complaints about the sautéed foie gras from me though. Got such lovely texture and they won me over serving it like a dessert too with a custard sauce, black pepper-flavored sponge cake, strawberry and shaved pistachio. The best dish of the night so far (7/10).
Spanish mackerel with kumquat and radish purée - one of the more disappointing dish on this night. The mackerel was a bit bland. Someone pass me some salt please (4/10).
Our last savory dish was a roasted duck from Kyoto served with crushed nuts and crumble with black pepper, alongside a nifty sautéed wheat Beer sauce. I love having duck and that pink color was oh so good (6/10).
We didn't want this journey to end so soon but when I looked at the clock again, it's been already 2 hours and time for dessert. First, a "decontructive" version of a mochi with red kidney beans, rice cake with lily bulb and fromage blanc ice-cream. A cup of orange dressing was served on the side.
That was very clever. We poured the orange dressing into the jar and mixed everything together. Heaven (7/10)!
Our final dish was a white chocolate sandwich with a thick slab of white chocolate wrapping around hundreds of apple cubes. A small ginger ice-cream, ginger crumble and some tarragon sauce rounded out the dish.
I thought this tasted much better than it looked. The white chocolate was just about right - not too sweet nor bland and its partnership with the ginger ice-cream and crumble was much better than expected (6.5/10).
We were so full at this point but the kitchen still got some complimentary items for us - Cuban cigars! No, it was mascarpone cheese with chocolate crumble, followed by a petite four.
I really like the way Chef Yoshiaki experimented with different combination of ingredients and mixing various flavors and textures together. Although the execution of some dishes proved to be slightly off, there's still no doubt in my mind that his avante garde cuisine is very much worth the hype.
Food Rating: 6/10
Price: ￥￥￥
Address: 1-16-12 Utsubohonmachi, Nishi-ku, Osaka, Japan Closest Metro Station: Honmachi
Tel: +81 (0)6 6479-1140
Website: difference.upper.jp
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