Yoichi

Text: Priya Bala
 
It’s the JSM Corporation, headed by seasoned restaurateur Sanjay Mahtani, that brought brands like Shiro and Hard Rock Café to Bangalore. So, a new outlet from them certainly holds a lot of promise.

Yoichi, meaning street market in Japanese, sets out to create the bustle, the vibrancy, the smells and sounds of the street markets of Southeast Asia. So, it’s been set up as a live marketplace, with stalls and carts, each beckoning you to stop and sample its wares. The space has been left deliberately unpolished. Gritty cement walls are covered with weathered posters and carelessly torn magazine pages. A large mural of an Asian woman in colourful attire adorns an entire wall. At the centre sits the bar with its counter made of reclaimed railway sleepers.

There’s an izakaya section with a robata at its heart, where you can order sake and Japanese whisky. The restaurant’s main bar is the Tuk Tuk Bar, evoking the streets of Bangkok. You’ll find also a claypot corner and a salad cart, serving up the crisp, herb-scented salads of Asia. From a charcoal-lit grill emerge all manner of meats and seafood, while vegetarians find their own corner.

Yoichi takes you back to the hawker markets, night markets and street carts of Bangkok, Osaka, Hanoi, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Here, you can sample everything from Thai glass noodles, Indonesian favourites, Korean kimchi ramen, Cantonese hot pots, Japanese classics like Hamachi Carpaccio and Tsukune and Vietnamese hotpots.
 
Block U, 1st Floor, Manyata Tech Park – 1, MS Ramaiah North City, Nagavara, Bengaluru 560045
Mob: 0 99001 85300
Meal for two: Approximately `1800 + taxes, without alcohol