Sashimi is given tender, loving care that results in a sublime, velvety mouthfeel and lingering aftertaste. — Photos: YAP CHEE HONG/The Star
Chipta11A Curated Dining is the sort of quiet, unassuming spot that is best described as a “hidden gem. Tucked away on a first floor shoplot in Petaling Jaya, the eatery is dotted with foliage, including a tiny space at the back which hosts a micro-herb garden of sorts. A minimalist, Nordic palette completes this tranquil, Zen space to perfection.
At the centre of the eatery is a show kitchen set around a bar table where guests get front row seats to the careful, intricate work that goes into Sabah-born chef Jack Weldie’s curated Japanese omakase menus.
Weldie has spent well over a decade honing his experience in local Japanese restaurants as well as popular café, Awesome Canteen, which was started by his now-wife Diane Ong. As the years progressed, Weldie itched to do something a little different. Which is when Ong mooted the idea of opening Chipta11A.
Weldie (left) and Ong are the husband-and-wife team behind Chipta11A, which has become a cult favourite Japanese omakase space.
“We have a space in Penang and we started doing degustation dinners there and that was very inspiring for Jack. So he was very excited to introduce this kind of food to Awesome Canteen but the reception was very poor – it was just the wrong demographic but Jack was becoming restless and frustated.
“So we thought why not find a place where rental is cheap and we don’t have to invest too much money? The idea was there wouldn’t be a fixed menu and Jack could do what he wanted, so that’s how we started,” says Ong.
Initially, Chipta11A featured a more extensive array of local ingredients but gradually – after demand grew for imported produce – Weldie began introducing more premium seafood from Japan. And then just a few months after the restaurant opened, the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
As luck would have it, Weldie had ordered a large quantity of seafood from Japan. Rather than let it go to waste, he decided to play around with dry-aging.
“In the previous Japanese restaurants I worked at, we did dry-aging for at most like two days. But two months? No way. But during the pandemic, I had to maximise the fish that I had ordered. So I turned to YouTube videos and did a lot of trial and error to figure out how to age the dish, so now three years later, I can confidently say I know what I am doing,” says Weldie.
Weldie has figured out the ins and outs of dry-aging seafood and is now confident in his abilities.
The eatery survived off the back of this spirit of innovation and became quite a sensation during the pandemic. These days, Weldie’s range of ngiri features seafood that is almost entirely dry-aged from giant tuna fish, which he dry-ages for two months to smaller fish, which is dry-aged for a few days.
Weldie also fuses many of the meals with ingredients from Borneo, partly in homage to his late mother, who greatly influenced how he views food.
As a consequence, you will find green chilli, tuhau (wild Sabah ginger) and bambangan dotted throughout different meals.
There are three menu options at Chipta11A – the abridged curated course for lunch (RM280), the signature curated course for dinner (RM350) and the premium seasonal course for dinner (RM500).
The signature curated course probably offers a little bit of everything for first-timers to the restaurant. Weldie is very spontaneous and switches things up regularly, so don’t expect to eat the same things on each occasion. In fact, go expecting things will be different every time.
With this menu, you will get a refreshment, appetiser, fish, beef, sashimi, six kinds of ngiri, soup, shokuji and dessert.
Some of the highlights from the omakase dinner include the corn fritter with gula Melaka shoyu and lily bulb puree, an ingenious creation that features a fritter with a crispy carapace that is studded with corn kernels inside. The starch in this mixture is perfect, just enough to form a firm bite and hold but not too much to give it a cloying quality. The lily bulb puree is thick and gooey and works extremely well in this configuration.
The corn fritter makes for a fiendishly addictive opener to the omakase experience here.
If you’re angling after something from the carnivorous persuasion, the grilled Australian wagyu M6 with beef jus and napa cabbage will be just the ticket. The beef has been grilled over charcoal and retains a char on the skin which segues into meat that is perfectly pink, incredibly juicy and succulent to the core.
On the sashimi front, you can look forward to two different cuts of amberjack – belly and loin as well as tuna, served alongside black fungus, perilla leaf and an in-house ikura marination. The amberjack is divine – supple and sumptuous with a lingering mouthfeel while the tuna is so velvety soft, it essentially dissolves upon contact with your palate.
The wagyu features perfectly cooked, succulent beef that melts in the mouth.
This is followed up by an array of sushi, which serve as the leading stars in this heavily star-studded ensemble omakase show. This is where Weldie’s dry-aging skills really come to the fore. The sushi rice on offer also differs from the norm, as Weldie uses Korean rice and asam jawa in place of the traditional Japanese vinegar commonly used in sushi.
“The idea for the asam jawa rice came from my heritage. I am Dusun and my mother used to make a dish called pinasakan, a fish dish which uses asam jawa. I was inspired by that,” he says.
Some of the most memorable ngiri put forth include the barracuda, an underrated fish which Weldie grew up eating in Sabah. Here, the barracuda has been dry-aged for five days and charred. As a result, the exterior of the fish has an outstanding char which gives way to silken soft insides. Eating this sushi is like having every one of your wildest dreams come true – it’s that good!
The dry-aged Hokkaido scallop ngiri is a thing of beauty that will extract oohs and aahs of pleasure.
Then there is the dry-aged Hokkaido scallop sushi, served with pickled wasabi and Szechuan pepper. This is just the stuff of gods – the scallop is limber and satin-soft and this is offset by the pungency of the wasabi and the heat of the Szechuan pepper.
Just when you think it can’t possibly get any better, you are introduced to the sakura oyster ngiri, brushed with soy butter and topped with horseradish and yellow mustard. There is absolutely nothing to fault in this ngiri, which epitomises the word ‘perfection’ and then some. Expect hits of euphoria as your teeth sink into the briny, almost custard like consistency of the oyster which offers delicious aquatic frequencies aplenty.
End your ngiri odyssey on a triumphant note with the otoro (tuna belly) with green chilli paste. The tuna is like butter in the mouth and this fatty goodness is perfectly countenanced by the green chilli, which offers heat and fire and sluices through the richness like a knight in shining armour.
A combination of milt, Bafun uni, ikura and kulim rice all work together to create beautiful aquatic flavours in each mouthful.
Another highlight of the omakase meal is the kulim rice with sakura prawns, girella milt (fish sperm sac) and Bafun uni. This is a meal designed to induce pure, unadulterated joy. And it does so by introducing textural and flavour juxtapositions and contrast that dance so successfully on the palate, you’ll be seduced and bewitched from the very first mouthful.
End your meal with what Ong calls a “controversial” dessert in the form of the wasabi nori ice cream with tofu cheesecake. The dramatic element in this dish is most definitely the wasabi ice-cream, which might sound strange in theory but actually works superbly well in reality. The ice-cream has the potency you might expect from horseradish but this is cut through by the sweetness in the dessert. In combination, the two elements seem like radical opposites, but there’s a reason they say opposites attract, right? Because this is exactly what polaric elements can do – create a combination so addictively good, you’ll wonder why more restaurants aren’t doing this.
The wasabi ice cream might sound odd, but it actually works surprisingly well in this dessert.
Ultimately, a meal at Chipta11A is one that you will both savour and remember. And in this age of transience and ephemeral qualities, Weldie and Ong seem to have hit on a magic formula, because their meals combine nostalgia and familiar flavours with luxury and opulence in what can only described as an unforgettable combination that you will want to repeat over and over again. Because wherever Weldie’s culinary imagination takes him, trust me, you’ll want to be along for the ride too.
Chipta11A Curated Dining
11a, Jalan 20/16
Sea Park
46300 Petaling Jaya
Tel: 011 2899 6296
Open Tuesday to Sunday: Tuesday and Sunday: 6pm to 10pm; Wednesday to Saturday: 12 to 2.30pm; 6pm to 10pm
