Japan's rural delights take a bow at Domo

John Lehndorff, Rocky Mountain News

Friday, October 10, 2003

Empty your mind of all thoughts and problems before you enter Domo, which is as much a state of mind as a restaurant. It's not the place to grab dinner before you head to a show. It is the show.

From the outside, this unusual eatery does not look all that special. Located on the edge of an industrial area next to the railroad tracks near the Colfax Avenue viaduct over Interstate 25, the restaurant is just one part of the Nippon Kan cultural center that includes an aikido school, a folk art museum and a Zen garden, one of Denver's top al fresco dining spots. Beside being a chef, owner Gaku Homma is also the chief aikido instructor.

Walk into Domo and you enter a separate reality. The wood- and bamboo-walled waiting area, like the dining room, is decorated with authentic Japanese folk art including paper lamps.

Customers can sip sake and watch Japanese TV until a table becomes available. Dinner at Domo takes as long as it takes.

You understand that fact once you sit down on a cushioned length of tree trunk set around an imposing flagstone table and feel remarkably right at home.

Domo's menu is an homage to the deceptively simple, earthy cookery of rural northern Japan. Most sushi bars and other tempura- and teriyaki-centered eateries serve urban Japanese cuisine, sometimes with a pronounced American accent.

The most important thing to know about dining at Domo is that you can't have it your way. Special orders don't upset them - the cooks simply don't accept them. All of the food comes to the table at once and it's pre-seasoned. Lucky for those of us who are chopstick-impaired, forks are available.

And you will not leave here hungry. All dinners come with miso soup and either brown rice or white rice with barley, and I could have made a meal of the seven family-style side dishes that accompany the dinners. The fried softshell crab was sweet and juicy and the green beans were napped in a creamy sesame-spiked tofu sauce.

I'd give an ''A'' to the Asian spinach with soy sauce, the chewy soba noodles splashed with toasted sesame oil, and the spicy chicken and peanuts. The pork, potato and carrot ''stew'' could find a home on any Midwestern dinner table; the seaweed and mung bean sprouts wouldn't.

Domo entree meals are divided into eight preparation techniques; you personalize the dishes with seafood, meat and other ingredients including pork, chicken dumplings, freshwater eel, tofu and chicken.

I loved the clear, clean flavors in the yakimono ($13.50 to $22.50). The perfect scallops, mussels and tempura-fried prawns were wok-fried with zucchini and a nicely fruity yakiniku sauce. You can also choose barely sweet teriyaki sauce or jalapeno- fired ''steak sauce.''

One of my guests, a longtime chef, expressed great satisfaction with his nagamono ($13.25 to $18.75). Soft buckwheat soba noodles were combined with greens, teriyaki shrimp and mussels and topped with a fried egg whose yolk enriched the sauce.

The tojimono ($15.25 to $18.25) provided a wonderful play of textures on the palate. Pieces of tender freshwater eel fillet mingled with the chew of shiitake mushrooms, carrots, onions and wakame sauteed with miso broth (or soy sauce). Egg custard is poured over the top and steamed, thereby melding this unlikely melange.

The other preparations included nabemono ($14.50 to $22.75), a clay pot packed with a pepper-spiked brothy stew of fish, meat, sea and land vegetables and tofu; the less interesting mild Japanese curry ($17.75 to $22.50); and the vegetarian saishoku ($13.25 to $15.50).

The dish that truly distinguishes Domo is wankosushi ($27.50 five-choice, $22.25 three-choice), chef Homma's interpretation of the food he grew up with in northern Japan. Unlike familiar urban sushi, which comes in neat units, wankosushi is a menu of 60-plus raw and cooked seafood and vegetable choices gracefully arrayed over variously seasoned rice in pretty little bowls, or wanko.

Some seasonings utilize soy sauce and a few include wasabi, but these typical sushi accompaniments aren't provided and the servers won't bring them.

The avocado unagi is a comfy dream. Rice and sweet freshwater eel are topped with avocado and an intriguing blend of flying-fish roe and mayo. The green horseradish proved the perfect foil for rich-tasting mackerel in the wasabi saba.

The beverage of choice is sake ($8.50 box, $80 bottle premium cold sakes; $5 to $40 warm house sakes).

At some Japanese eateries sake is microwaved or dispensed hot from a sake dispenser. At Domo, the house sakes are heated in the traditional fashion in metal cups over warm water.

Premium sakes - some sour, sweet, thick or aromatic - are overpoured cold into square, black lacquer boxes as a symbol of hospitality. You sip the excess from a saucer under the box.

Service at Domo varies from impeccable to inexperienced. This is a different style of service. There's no waiter looming over the table upselling you to a higher-priced sake. In fact, long stretches pass when no servers are in sight. Sometimes that's because Domo is a tad understaffed.

Since Domo serves no desserts, I recommend preparing yourself for re-entry into the world with a pot of hot tea ($1.75 pot). Choices range from tart, salty pickled plum to soothing chrysanthemum.

Words like harmonious, balanced and calm come to mind now when I think about Domo. I found it refreshing that tradition - not the quirky consumer - rules.

If you can do Domo on its own terms, it can be a simply extraordinary experience. There is no other restaurant remotely like it in the city, the state or the region.