Waiters outnumbered customers on the night we visited this yakitori restaurant in Lan Kwai Fong. As we entered, the familiar sounds of Eugene Pao coming from the Jazz Club the floor above segued into Kenny G, Sumiya's main act for the night. Though yakitori were originally small pieces of chicken skewered on bamboo and cooked over charcoal, these days restaurants offer a variety of meats and vegetables, flavoured simply with salt or tare (a soy-based sauce).
For starters we had yakitori eggplant, garlic and ginkgo nuts (each serving of two sticks cost $28). Probably because of our short memory span, each dish seemed to out-do the previous one - so much for the theory that ginkgo nuts are brain food. But at least we were conscious enough to register that this latter offering was flawless: moist, ripe (they are technically fruit) and cooked for just the right time, they slid off the skewers easily and had us staring forlornly at the empty plate. The spongy eggplant, swabbed with tare, was slightly bloated and deliciously smoky. And the garlic cloves, all 12 of them, were a treat, antisocial as they might have been.
Instead of having mains, we requested more side dishes. The grilled bean curd ($28), served straight from the flames and accompanied by soy sauce and grated radish, was crispy, firm and hot enough to make the katsuoboshi fish flakes squirm. Even non-tofu fans would have found it hard to condemn these protein blocks as bland.
The two rice dishes ordered were, surprisingly, the most disappointing. The grilled rice ball ($30) contained fish flakes, even though our waitress had earlier pronounced it to be vegetarian-friendly, and the sea urchin fried rice was not worth its $120 price tag. Ordering the latter as an act of revenge on the creature that years ago left 27 spikes in my guest's left foot and 19 in his right, we concluded that the urchin had got the last laugh. Not only was the rice dry, there was hardly any of the headlining act.
Not in the mood for any of the four desserts - nata de coco, fruit and ice cream (sesame and green tea) - we ended the meal with a serving of edamame, the salty, boiled soya beans that usually precede a meal. If nothing else, they gave us a second wind.
With a 10 per cent service charge, the bill for two, including one beer, was $379.50.