Kasui

Kasui sits on Plaça de Raimundo Clar in Palma's old town, a few lanes east of Plaça Major, and since 2019 it has been doing something the city had long been missing: a Japanese house that thinks from the fire rather than from the sushi counter. At its centre is the robatayaki grill, the Japanese charcoal grill, and the whole menu is built around it as Asian tapas made for sharing. The concept deliberately mixes two origins: the Japanese grilling tradition on one side, the street kitchens of Southeast Asia on the other. That could sound arbitrary, but it is set very precisely. The dishes carry Japanese technique and seasoning while borrowing their heat, acidity and sweetness from Southeast Asian street food. The room is unpretentious and fairly intimate; you eat at tables, at the bar, or outside on the terrace. If it is your first visit, take a seat at the counter. From there you watch the kitchen and the grill directly, and in a house like this that is not a sideshow but half the evening. Robatayaki – why Kasui is a grill house Robatayaki is the Japanese art of grilling over charcoal. Unlike other barbecue traditions, it originally cooked mostly fish straight over the flame; vegetables came later, and finally the skewers, yakitori from chicken and kushiyaki from everything else. The signature of the technique is height: the food sits at different levels above the embers, so cooking time and heat can be steered separately. Charcoal, marinades and sauces do the rest and bring aromas no other grill delivers. That smoke is the thread running through the whole menu. It carries from the grilled vegetables all the way to the fish, and it is the reason Kasui sounds noticeably different from the city's other Japanese addresses. The menu: izakaya, grill and street food The menu is split into sections. Izakaya holds the cold and raw things: scallop sashimi with seaweed, tobiko, togarashi and a ponzu of yuzu and truffle; salmon tartare with avocado mousse, Kioto sauce and fried wonton; a steak tartare with miso and mustard, foie mi-cuit, cured egg yolk and parmesan; plus gyoza of pork, prawn and leek with okonomiyaki sauce, wasabi mayonnaise and katsuobushi. From the robatayaki come grilled avocado with pico de gallo, yoghurt and sweet chilli, aubergine with miso sauce, sesame, yuzu, dried bonito and tenkasu, secreto ibérico teriyaki with celeriac purée and pineapple chutney, pork ribs in a Korean chilli marinade with piquillo cream, yoghurt and the house furikake, salmon with mango teriyaki, cucumber sunomono and banana chips, miso-marinated sea bass with bimi and wafu sauce, and prawn kushiyaki with fried corn and a chilli-lime mayonnaise. The street food section is short and to the point: crisp-fried cauliflower with an Asian rosé sauce and furikake, bao with pork belly, hoisin and shiso, beef dim sum with Thai curry, Thai pesto, cured king prawn and panipuri. Kimchi and jasmine rice with sesame stand as side dishes. Sweet things run to a white chocolate and yuzu cremoso with cocoa crumble and passion fruit, a cheesecake with kaffir lime syrup and candied walnuts, and mochi in vanilla and chocolate. Cocktails, sake and the bar The bar at Kasui is not an afterthought. The house keeps a short list of its own signature cocktails, tuned to the food: gin with basil, elderflower cordial and lemon; dark rum with kaffir lime syrup, pineapple and lime; a Margarita Japonesa of tequila, triple sec and yuzu juice; and the house Kasui Ice Tea with matcha, mango and lemon. If you would rather keep it classic, there is sake by the glass, Japanese beer and a tight, well-chosen wine list that includes a Mallorcan red. For larger parties the house arranges group menus on request. The people behind Kasui The head chef and co-owner is Miki Cerdà, a Mallorcan. He trained in hotel kitchens on the island, then went to Barcelona and on to London, where he worked at Roka, a house specialising in Japanese cooking and precisely in robatayaki. That is where the idea of opening something of his own on Mallorca took shape; Kasui is the result. Álvaro Busquets and Da Fernández stand with him at the bar and the grill.