Might as well be spring: Grilled asparagus and crimini mushrooms. Photo:  Steven Richter

       My guests tonight are over the moon about Kibo, restaurant conglomerator Steve Hanson’s newest offering in the sprawling space where Japonais used to be.  “This is the best Japanese food I’ve ever had,” says Janice. Her husband agrees.

        As for my vegetarian niece Dana, “I never had Japanese food this good.” She can’t believe how many options seem designed just for her - and her vow not to eat anything with eyes. But in fact, everything we are eating is on the smartly tailored menu we haven’t even seen, because I just said, “Let the chef decide.”

Kibo means wish. Tanzaku ribbon wishes hang on wish-walls. Photo: Steven Richter

       That was a brilliant move since the top chef tonight is Kibo consultant Joël Robuchon’s gifted and disciplined international executive chef Yosuke Suga, flown in from Paris for a brush up and press ops. I remember his brilliant sense of flavoring and texture from his reign at Atelier de Robuchon in the Four Seasons Hotel, before the boss, the man with more Michelin stars than anyone else in the world, tapped him to move on to Tokyo.

It’s late Saturday night, enter late blooming skirts.  Photo: Steven Richter

       Robuchon and Steve Hanson struck me as an improbable coupling. But it seems BR Guest’s new Chef Operating Office knew Robuchon from Las Vegas. Robuchon actually has a Japanese restaurant in Monaco, the one-star Yoshi. Though it is purer than Kibo would be, he told the Times Florence Fabricant in an interview. Kibo is “a popular restaurant and it has to correspond to younger tastes,”  he confided. Sounds properly Steve Hanson. (Confession: Hanson is a longtime friend and advertiser). The deal came together quickly. Even Kibo’s executive chef Darrell Raymond from Buddakan was taken by surprise.

What does an oyster off the robata need? Seaweed butter. Photo: Steven Richter

       Of course Dana and my friends, have never eaten at Masa or Gari in his days behind the counter on the Upper East Side, or Hatsuhana or Kuruma Zushi, Sushi Zen or even Jewel Bako, and they’ve never been to Japan. But I understand their reaction. I have to agree most of what I’m tasting is a revelation, vivid and often fiery, sometimes too salty from the “saltiness” of certain spices, and definitely not the usual strait-laced, occasionally puzzling Japanese subtlety.

Fatty beef with shishito pepper from the grill. Photo: Steven Richter

       We are swooning over silken fatty Wagyu beef with shishito peppers and packages of boneless chicken wings with leeks, garlic chips, teriyaki sauce and red pepper threads from the robata grill. And crimini mushrooms  halved and pebbled with Japanese seven spice. “Is this the best asparagus I’ve ever eaten?” someone asks. “And it isn’t even spring.” The lemony sauce that tastes so like hollandaise is…hollandaise.  Simple seaweed butter does not overwhelm delicate Kushi oysters. Butter, yes, the conspiracy to seduce American taste buds triumphs.

Boo Lim's sushi shimmers with freshness but not enough uni for all. Photo: Steven Richter

        With sushi master Boo Lim from Sushi of Gari in the house tonight, a platter prepared for our table shimmers with freshness, the rice discreetly flavored. But there are only two nori wrapped thrones for sea urchin for our five.  I capture one quickly, quietly exalting in the burst of sea that fills my mouth, my own private uni, not wanting to advertise my selfishness. 

Wok-seared spicy beef on udon noodles with fiery pepper threads. Photo: Steven Richter

       My guy and I enjoyed some of these same dishes with our friend Bob on a desolate Sunday night when Kibo was almost deserted after the shocking October snowstorm. Robuchon avatars were nowhere to be seen.  We sat in a booth with one of those super-trained BR Guest waiters frothing over with the need, the mission, to explain everything. We let him babble away as if we’d never had food from a robata nor encountered a Wagyu cow. The place still has its handsome sculpted wood ceiling, but anime murals behind us are new. A chef in the well-lit sushi kitchen seemed bored. Kibo means wish. I was enchanted seeing Tanzaku, fabric ribbons hanging everywhere with wishes and prayers written on them just like those we photographed in Japan.

        The asparagus could not have been more perfectly cooked. I put a battered disc of eggplant in my mouth, and for more than a few seconds, I thought I was eating foie gras. We were wild about the beef tartare and romaine with wasabi dressing, piling it on crisps, although the salt burned my lips. “Is beef tartare Japanese?” I wondered at the time. The miso black cod passed the as-good-as-Nobu test. And I promised myself I’d be back just for the spicy udon noodles with wok-fried beef laced with those ubiquitous red strings that detonated in my mouth.

        But the chicken dumplings were clumsy, and five tiny slices of Wagyu rib eye not quite rare enough seemed a bit stingy for $29. Spicy tuna roll and the $18 rainbow roll did not impress. It took three bites to be sure the splendorous 20-layer chocolate cake was as wimpy as the first taste suggested.

        Unknown to me, our companion that evening immediately called Suga in Paris. “You better get back here,” he told him. Apparently that set the stage for the press and friends invitational last week. We guests of the house were scattered throughout the room, as Park Avenue South habitués filled the turning tables.

        “What’s going on?” I ask Suga. “Why is the food so spicy?”

Tropical fruit sorbet on mango yogurt parfait and red fruit in yuzu gelée. Photo: Steven Richter

       “New Yorkers like food that is spicy,” he assures me. “The Japanese respect more the flavor of the food. They don’t put much spice or much sauce.”

        That explains why so many dishes at Kibo have a peppery after-kick, occasionally even a demonic bite. Spicy cucumbers are as advertised, spicy. And the Brussels sprouts, which would be cooked soft in Paris, are al dente, because, as he observes, “Americans like their vegetables not so cooked.” 

I couldn’t resist taking this closeup of the mango parfait. It’s less-fattening than eating it. Photo: Gael Greene

       If like me you are cynical about Brand-Name consultants who light the fire and then disappear, you may be reassured to know that the great chef’s emissary was trying to create a Robuchon Effect in the Kibo kitchen on last week’s brief visit. “Now I am leaving behind Ayuma Matsuda in the kitchen. He was with me for six years at Robuchon in the Four Seasons hotel. I asked M. Robuchon if it is okay and he agrees.”

        He left us tasting desserts, a yogurt mango parfait with exotic-fruit sorbet, and a bowl of perfect red fruits coated with raspberry-yuzu gelee under a fluff of vanilla bean whipped cream. Suga thought he would be back with each changing season. But I’m sure I’ll be back with pepperhead friends soon.