Recently, my foodie friend (or is it foodie enabler?) and I went to a pastry-based omakase! I was intrigued by the concept, which is why I agreed to go. And although I was a bit worried that I would not be full on pastries alone, I am happy to report that we had a GREAT time and did indeed leave feeling full.

Led by chef Makoto Arami, Ami Patisserie marries French patisserie techniques with fresh Japanese produce. Apart from the omakase, which only seats 12 people at a go, there is also a cafe. For both, you’ll have to make advance reservations because the place is actually quite small! The menu is also seasonal so I’m also writing this post to remind myself of what we had.

The first course was a hazelnut financier made with brown butter. It was a sweet start to the meal and though it was small, it packed a lot of flavour. This would be something I would buy for myself if it was available at the cafe.

The second course was a chou filled with egg and topped with caviar. Now we were on to more savoury items. When I read that the chou was filled with egg, I thought it was going to be egg salad for some reason. Well, it might have been that but there was a gloriously runny yolk in the middle that made the dish really special.

The third course was a tomato tartlet that was basically fresh tomatoes on a cheese biscuit. That may sound plain, especially compared to the egg and caviar chou from the previous dish but nope, this was one of my favourite courses and I don’t normally eat fresh tomatoes (normally I need them cooked in some way first)! The tomatoes were very sweet and juicy and went very well with the cheese pastry and basil sauce. It was really a flavour match made in heaven.

We were served the breads around this time and that was what started to fill me up. Everyone got two pieces of bread: an amazing sourdough (that went perfectly with this extra virgin olive oil so good it tasted slightly fruity) and something that was essentially a seaweed croissant. Both were very good but I think I prefer the sourdough because of how good the olive oil was. All they added to the oil were some salt flakes but that was all it needed.

The fourth course was a Japanese uni brioche. Compared to the previous courses, I wasn’t as big a fan of this one and it’s mostly my fault. I’m just not a fan of uni and even though I could tell the uni here was good, it just wasn’t for me.

We topped up $28 for a fifth course – the Awajishima Onion Soup – and it was completely worth it. The soup was creamy, probably because of the onsen egg, and so sweet from the onions. There was a bit of crunch as some of the onions are fried and we pretty much slurped up every last drop. The soup was topped with truffles but I found that to be milder; the onion was definitely the star of the show here.

After the soup, we started moving back to the sweet dishes with a blend of sweet and savoury in the sixth course, an eggplant brulée. It was basically grilled eggplant on top of a creme brulée and I have mixed feelings about the dish. I liked the savoury grilled eggplant and I liked the sweet creme brulée but I didn’t think they went particularly well together. I ended up enjoying it more by eating them separately.

The seventh course was essentially an orange sherbet with jelly and it was a good palate cleanser. I think the jelly was alcoholic but the taste wasn’t too strong.

The eighth course was a chocolate biscuit layered with chocolate and coffee mousse. The biscuits were pretty good but I found the taste of the coffee mousse to be very strong and as a non-coffee drinker, it wasn’t for me.

The ninth course was mix of shaved strawberry ice and strawberries on a milk ice-cream base. I love strawberry milk so I was really looking forward to this one and I wasn’t disappointed! It was a simple concept that was well-executed and I enjoyed the range of textures by using both shaved strawberry ice and actual strawberries.

And the ending dish, the oyatsu, was a very soft homemade warabimochi. The warabimochi was, of course, very good but I think you can get something similar at Kamakura Warabimochi as well (and Kamakura warabimochi has these really nice warabimochi drinks) so I wouldn’t come just for this.

Two more things that I noticed and wanted to talk about:

1. The drinks are pretty pricy! The tea is $12 and yes, it’s Mariage Freres but it’s still just tea. I got the dessert wine instead.
2. You don’t really get to talk to the chef very much – I think we only talked to him during the onion soup course. Generally, you’ll see him come out to finish a few of the dishes, but he does have an assistant who does a lot of the front-facing finishing touches; I think he’s more involved in the backend. That said, the staff are friendly and did a good job explaining each dish so we still had a good experience overall.

All-in-all, I was pleasantly surprised by the omakase! The pastries were really well done and we enjoyed them so much that towards the end of the meal, we asked the staff if they had anything leftover from the cafe section that we could buy and bring home (I took back a very decadent black forest chou). While there were a few things that I wasn’t a huge fan of, those were more because of my personal preferences and I really enjoyed the meal overall.