My friends and I wanted to have a decent meal but nothing too long and too precious so we dropped in on Boruto for good sake based drinks and decent bites. This izakaya is about its sake drinks, homemade umeshu and largely uncomplicated tapas. Enjoyable dishes include its nicely grilled spare rib, stuffed chicken wing and deep fried pork belly. My main gripe is probably its downstairs seating which felt bit too spartan.

Boruto is the sister restaurant of Tamashii Robataya (see blog) so I had high expectations for the food. Between the two, Tamashii is probably still better for food. However, Boruto is relatively more reasonable and hence, a decent place if you want to have some nice drinks and share some small plates of food. This is very much an izakaya – so good Japanese pub grub.

Our dinner started with a load of drinks: umeshu, a sake based cocktail, and sake. All this to accompany our starting dishes of fried squid tentacles, fried burdock root and seared saga beef.

Before I go on with the food pictures, Boruto has a nice sake bar area upstairs which I think has a cozier ambiance. Jars of homemade umeshu sit in fridges here. When I saw this I definitely wanted a glass – I’m partial to the sweet-sour taste of plum that I think is really nice as a liquor. One of Boruto’s more unique features is its vault that houses a collection of fine sake.

Back to the food. The following are probably the two items that I thought fell short of the rest of our meal. The platter of fried chicken skin, cartilage and giblets was a bit underwhelming, mainly because I think I prefer these to be done yakitori style. The main disappointment to me was the crab sausage which is served in a reduced crab bisque but ended up a bit too fishy for most of out tastes to really rave over.

The next series of dishes were all enjoyable. One of my favorites for the evening were the chicken wings stuffed with white bait, minced pork and wild vegetables. The deep fried pork belly was also very tasty but one of the main highlights was the marinated grilled spare rib – nicely tender and juicy.

I would say that the next time I come, I’m going to have the uni (sea urchin) pasta all for myself. But since my weakness is uni, I’ve yet to come across a uni pasta that I don’t like.

We tried two desserts – the warabi mochi, which is one of my favorite Japanese desserts; and the poached pear. The warabi mochi is served with lightly jello-ed champagne. This to us was a bit of an odd combination. However, the poached pear with oolong tea accompanied by cherry blossom ice cream was good.

Boruto has quite an interesting menu and there are some other items that I’d like to try. I wouldn’t say that all the dishes were mind blowing – this isn’t that type of place. The food is not that complex but they do a few items well which encourages me to return to try a few others. That and the umeshu.

Boruto’s website: http://boruto.com.sg