Hai, it’s not your usual sushi!

There are Japanese restaurants, and then there’s Juan Miro Restaurant. Chef Seiji Kamura, who manages the outlet’s branch along Meralco Ave. in Ortigas Center, declares that his restaurant is not your usual sushi and tempura place. Instead, he serves a Japanese chef’s version of continental cuisine.

"Many Japanese are familiar with this kind of cooking," says chef Kamura. "It is our version of the European style of cooking."

Call it fusion cooking, call it Japanese continental cuisine, and definitely, call it filling. Those who want the full Juan Miro experience should try any of the restaurant’s five set menus, a crash course in Japanese-style nouvelle cuisine.

Lunch can be an overwhelming experience with its extensive menu of appetizers, salads, soups, chicken, pork, seafood and beef dishes, a selection of curries, pasta, rice choices, and the usual sushi, sashimi and makimono items. The set menus take away the guesswork since they come complete with appetizers, soup, salad, a choice of entrée, dessert and bottomless coffee.

On the day we visited Juan Miro in Ortigas, we were served what has since been called the PR set menu. It is actually the Set B menu, with its five appetizers, except that it comes with a modest serving of abalone steak. That afternoon, we were treated to appetizers of smoked ham with asparagus, tofu Miro-style, abalone steak, spinach spaghetti and tuna sashimi. Soup was a really creamy and sinfully sweet cream of corn soup, while the entrée was a choice of tenderloin with horseradish dressing or prawns. We had the tenderloin, of course.

The set menus start with three appetizers for Set A, and all the way to nine appetizers for Set D. The mother-of-all-set menus is the Toyota Course, named after ravenous Japanese Toyota executives who always complain of never being full after a visit at Juan Miro.

"It’s really for all those diners who complain na bitin pa sila," says chef Kamura.

The Toyota is the same as Set D, except that it comes with abalone rice, a really filling rice dish.

Chef Kamura says French cooking is dependent on heavy sauces made with wine or butter, because many of the cooks then didn’t have access to fresh ingredients. The sauces mask whatever imperfection there is in the beef or the other ingredients.

Nouvelle cuisine goes the extreme of French cooking with its emphasis on light meals and fresh flavors, a sensitivity in tune with the Japanese temperament.

At Juan Miro, he says the food takes into account the colorful combination of ingredients.

"It looks good, it smells good and it tastes good," he adds. "It is very important that you are happy with what you see because you will also like what you will eat."

Born in Yokohama, Japan, chef Kamura studied at the Tokyo Cooking Academy. After graduation, he went to Lyons, France, where he took an intensive cooking course and training program. Upon his return to Japan, he was made chief executive cook at the prestigious Kamakurayama Restaurant.

In 1979, he went to the Philippines to open a branch, but the move proved to be untimely. In 1983, he opened his first restaurant, called Don Juan. Seven years later, he reopened it as Miro, before finally settling on Juan Miro in 1997.

The Ortigas branch, which opened early this year, was developed to tap a growing market of Filipino and Filipino-Chinese food lovers in the area. The new branch is expected to cater to the Filipino market.

Chef Kamura makes it a point to go around the restaurant to ask his guests how they like his cooking. Since most of his dishes are his own creations, he is constantly adjusting dishes until he gets the thumbs up from his guests.

"Some guests come here three times a week," he admits. "When they ask me for something new, it is a challenge for me."

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Juan Miro Restaurant is at the second floor, Millennium Place, Meralco Ave., Ortigas Center. Call 687-08-80 and 687-34-39 for inquiries.