By Robin Garr
LouisvilleHotBytes.com
When a rising young chef at a popular new restaurant earns a James Beard Award nomination as an “emerging chef,” then steps up to serve as executive chef at another exciting new eatery, what would you expect?
When we’re talking about Chef Lawrence Weeks, who garnered the Beard nomination at North of Bourbon in Germantown, and spread his wings to hold down the same role at Enso in Clifton, I would expect great things.
Indeed, after oohing and aahing through a memorable meal at Enso, I’d basically just gasp in awestruck delight. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that both restaurants share the same ownership team as well as Weeks’s leadership in the kitchen.
“Enso is a Southern restaurant using Japanese technique and style to connect the parallels in culture between Japan and the American South,” Enso declares in its social media.
Enso’s decor is simple and spare, with a Zen-like Japanese vibe in its white and glass, mostly unadorned simplicity, blonde wooden tables and comfortable padded chairs, attractive dishes and glassware, quality cotton napkins, and hot white oshibori hand towels offered as you begin your meal. Only wooden chopsticks are provided, although I don’t doubt that forks are available on request.
Enso’s menu expresses Zenlike enlightenment in its sweet and gentle reassurances: “All house-made noodles use Anson Mills flour (Columbia, SC), all proteins are local, all beef is dry-aged in house, all vegetables are sourced regionally and local when applicable, all seafood is sourced responsibly as possible, and everything is brought to you with love.”
The dinner-only bill of fare is concise but offers plenty of variety, with a dozen small plates subdivided into “cold” and “hot,” priced from $8 (for Japanese potato salad or sesame turnip greens) to $28 (for Japanese Country Captain, a Carolina Low Country-Japanese treatment of chicken thighs). Seven charcoal-grilled skewers range in price from $9 (for okra) to $16 (for Hokkaido scallops); a sampler with one of each item is $44. Three main-course noodle dishes are $26 (for mushroom yakisoba) to $32 (for citrus niboshi ramen).
A couple of desserts and a fancy tea service complete the menu, plus an option to “show the kitchen some love” with a $10 contribution to the folks in the back of the house. The full bar offers well chosen selections of sake, whiskey, beer and wine and craft cocktails.
We started with cocktails that brought Japanese flavors to the table: An Enso old fashioned ($14) made with salted sweet-potato infused toki (a blended Japanese whisky from Beam Suntory) and a porch spritz ($14) fashioned from the bitter Italaian aperetif Aperol, rice-based saki-adjacent awamori from Okinawa, watermelon and bubbles, garnished with a big sprig of the minty Japanese leafy herb shiso.
We also were offered a lagniappe, a small cup of quaffable cold blackberry ginger and corn tea with candied ginger.
Miso cucumber salad (($10) from the cold small plates menu was a delightful surprise. Unpeeled, crisp thick cucumber slices were coated with a soft miso sauce that added a salty, savory flavor to the mix. Tiny strips cut from black nori seaweed and a sprinkle of benne sesame seeds all came together in a lovely chorus.
Our server recommended a dry-aged beef skewer ($17) made from local beef, and we’re glad she did. Six tender, heavily marbled bigger-than-bite-size beef cubes were lined up on two bamboo skewers and char-grilled to perfection, then drizzled with a mushroom-butter glaze almost as thick as pudding that added a earthy flavor to every bite. A bowl of bourbon salt and a wedge of lime came alongside to offer extra flavor pops.
A simple okra skewer ($9) alongside might have seemed simple in comparison, but it can be a gift to be simple, and these were very good. Five long, think okra pods had been grilled just to al dente crispness, striped with a thick garlic-ginger glaze, and sprinkled with toasted rice salt and benne sesame seeds.
Yakisoba is a traditional and beloved Japanese street-food noodle dish, and Enso’s mushroom yakisoba ($26, pictured at the top of this page) represents. House-made white yakisoba wheat noodles, roughly the shape of linguine, are tender and soft, similar in texture to ramen noodles. They’re dressed with a mix of seasonal veggies – julienned zucchini, yellow squash, carrots, and chewy shiitake mushrooms and squares of cabbage during the season of summer bounty, small cubes of firm tofu, and I could swear I saw a couple of avocado slices in there. It all comes together with a thin, savory, umami-loaded brown sauce that makes the dish almost too good to resist.
A simple yet complex egg custard dessert ($10) kept up the same high pace. A tiny jar bore layers of blueberries, rich custard, and crunchy benne seed granola brought together with the brown-sugar flavor of local maple syrup.
A truly exceptional dinner totaled $106. plus a $25 tip for flawless attention from our server, Gabriella.
Enso
1758 Frankfort Ave.
ensolouisville.com
facebook.com/ensolouisville
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Noise Level: The room filled up fast on a Friday night, making for an undeniably noisy scene. But conversation remained possible with average decibel levels at a buzzy but bearable 75.8dB with only occasional peaks into the 80dB range.
Accessibility: The entrance and restrooms and tables in the main floor, bar area, and patio appear accessible to wheelchair users.
