The Latest Catch

Blackened ahi tuna with soy mustard butter sauce (Photo By John Anderson)

Roy's

Friday-Saturday, 5-10:30pm

Roy's Restaurants opened in Honolulu in 1988 as a showcase for the talents of chef Roy Yamaguchi. He developed a name for himself internationally and in the States by creating fusion cuisine based on fresh Hawaiian ingredients prepared with French technique, and he later released a cookbook (Roy's Feasts From Hawaii) based on his cooking, and produced a PBS cooking series on Hawaiian cuisine. Recently Roy, or rather his restaurant chain, decided to beach itself on Austin's fair shores.

We were curious about the recently opened Austin branch of the Roy's chain for several reasons. We had heard several good reports from diners with tastes we trust, and we were inquisitive about how a fusion food chain was able to keep its concept and menu fresh, new, and appealing after a decade-plus of business. We also wanted to see how what had been a well-worn warehouse was converted into a first-class restaurant space.

One approaches Roy's through a forest of flaming-gas tiki lamps, across from the western boundary of the enlarged Austin Convention Center. You are immediately greeted and escorted past the gleaming open kitchen to your table. The space is open and bright, with large triptych murals of palms and tropical flowers, and a warm, elegant feel to the large dining room. Fresh roses adorn the tabletops and the setting features nice, heavy silverware and thickly woven linens.

The menu presents the diner with a slight problem from the start. The fish, which is the centerpiece of the menu and is flown in daily from Hawaii, is listed by Hawaiian name, leaving the diner in the dark without the interpretation of the waitperson. In short, you have a menu that's meaningless (shutome, onaga, ono, etc.) unless you know what the different fish are. A feature of the menu designed to enforce the fact that they bring the fish in from Hawaii becomes instead a slight annoyance.

The waitstaff, although knowledgeable about the food and prompt, is a bit over the top in their attempts to "bond" with the table. Even if it were true, would we really want to know our waitperson started working at Roy's simply because the food was so good? And why worry the diner that they, too, might be forced to get jobs here because the food is so good? Crank that bubbly effervescence back a few cheeky smiles and the service would be perfect.

But let us forge on to the meat of the matter: the food. We were pleasantly surprised with the taste and the freshness after several visits dining there. Immediately upon sitting down, diners are presented with drink and wine lists and served fresh, warm sesame-crusted bread with high-quality, soft butter. The iced tea is fresh-brewed, strong, and clear, and water and tea glasses are constantly and clandestinely topped off.

We began one visit with the appetizer "Canoe" ($26 for two people), which consists of a mix of several of the starters from the menu. Two skewers of meltingly tender Indonesian chicken saté sit atop a mound of edamame (curiously cold but boiled Japanese soy beans). Next is a pair of "potstickers" (actually deep-fried, stuffed wontons) on a bed of sunomo-style pickled cucumber. Two skewered grilled shrimp on kim chee are served with a spicy tomato-based sauce, and the two baby back ribs are fall-off-the-bone tender, but the dry rub was a little on the thick side. The canoe is rounded off with a mound of cubed sushi-fresh tuna poke (a raw Hawaiian tuna salad), mixed with cubes of avocado, and tossed with sesame oil dressing. It's a clever presentation for a tasty starter teetering on the brink of an acceptable price.

The canoe is followed by service of warm hand towels to be used for cleaning the rib residue from the hands. Once clean, the diner's hands are ready to attack the superlative misoyaki butterfish ($11 for smaller portion, $22 for full size). Kissed with a sweet ginger glaze, the fish is incredibly succulent and moist. It rests on a timbale of coconut rice and is accompanied by a small serving of excellent wasabi-braised baby bok choy. The combination of flavors is perfection.

On one visit we coerced the kitchen to serve us a half order (which was one large rib) of charred beef short ribs ($24 for a full order). They're more akin to large meaty shanks than any short rib we've ever seen. The glaze is a nebulous garlic-honey-mustard concoction with very subtle flavor. The rib rests on the aforementioned coconut rice and braised bok choy, and a small portion of tart poi (taro paste). The beef was very tender and tasty, even though the sides were all the same.

The shutome (which turns out to be very similar to swordfish, $24) is perfectly prepared. Again, it's served with the timbale of coconut rice and wasabi bok choy and has a garnish of panko-crusted fried banana resting on top. The fish is moist and flavorful, with its accompanying sauce of butter-emulsified, rich red curry. The shutome and the butterfish ruled the taste competition of our visits, and both are very worthy contenders for fish of the year.

A minor letdown was Roy's version of surf and turf, whose meat and fish components change nightly ($27). The night we tried it, it consisted of grilled lamb chops with prickly pear sauce and chipotle-crusted ono (wahoo) with a soy lemon sauce. The lamb chops that night were fatty and oddly devoid of flavor while the prickly pear sauce was overly tart and unbalanced. The ono is topped with a crust of searingly piquant chipotle chiles, which fail to blend smoothly with the taste of the accompanying lemon sauce. The ono, normally one of our favorite fish fillets, is slightly overcooked and a little on the dry side. The whole shebang rests on a mound of what we were told is fried rice, although the gummy, gelatinous mixture resembled no fried rice we have ever witnessed. The whole dish seems discombobulated and disappointing.

We passed on the much ballyhooed warm chocolate soufflé with the oozing center for what seemed more appropriate for a tropical restaurant: the mixed sorbet platter ($6). Cleverly presented on fanned-out, carpaccio-thin slices of pineapple, mango, and kiwi, the three flavors that night were coconut, kiwi fruit (both excellent), and blood orange. The dish was perfect except for the blood orange. It had the bitter taste of pith, as if the prep staff had pushed way too long and way too hard on the spinning knob of the juicer, extracting the bitterness of the pith and peel with the vibrant juice of the blood orange. Close to perfect, but again slightly off the mark.

The transformation from funky warehouse to a beautiful new restaurant can be declared a total success: Roy's is open, airy, warm, and inviting. The service is very close to being all that it should be, if they can just get rid of their youthful exuberance and learn to relax a bit, without dogging the diner. The food is also very close to what we would imagine Roy's vision to be, and we find the concept fresh and frisky rather than tired and boring. Mostly hits, with a few glaring misses, but all-in-all, enjoyable food. With a little polishing, Roy's can be a gleaming and shining example of what tropical fish fusion cuisine should be.