In Groton, Kaenyama is a new and welcome face in the crowd

January 13, 2016 11:01 pm • Last Updated: January 14, 2016 9:58 pm

By Jill Blanchette

Tempura Udon Soup at Kaenyama in Groton features a mild broth brimming with slippery noodles and a plate of shrimp and vegetable tempura on the side. (Jill Blanchette/The Day)
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Feeding people is a tough business. And the quality of the food, it seems, is just one of the factors that determine whether a restaurant succeeds or suddenly, without warning, disappears.

In this region we are lucky. We have time only to mourn briefly when our favorite spot falls under the fickle whims of the restaurant goddesses, because very soon a new option is sure to take its place.

Take for example Kaenyama, a new sushi restaurant in the Groton Shopping Plaza that sprung up where the former Beirut's Food Palace had closed mere months before. As if by magic, what was once a no-frills, Mediterranean mom-and-pop joint has been transformed into a dimly lit, soothing Japanese sushi parlor that also features hibachi and teriyaki and, surprise, terrific ramen and udon soups. Most menu options are for meat-eaters, but there are vegetarian appetizers and sushi rolls and a vegetarian ramen in the mix.

Our first visit was for a mid-week dinner and I was immediately drawn to the paper “Noodle Soups” menu. I chose the Miso Cha Shu Ramen — pork belly, bean sprouts, shiitake mushrooms in a miso pork broth — $14.99.

We also ordered several sushi rolls; a Crispy Roll with crab, seaweed salad and tempura flake, $7; a Paradise Roll with shrimp tempura, cucumber and spicy crab, $10.50; and a Sexy Girl Roll, with shrimp tempura, cucumber, spicy tuna and tempura flake, $11.50.

Our lovely waitress recommended we start with the sushi, which a young man in chef whites quickly prepared right across the narrow dining room. All three rolls were beautifully presented on a large white platter with plenty of wasabi and pickled ginger, decorated with squiggles of anonymous sauce and a flurry of crispy bits.

The Paradise Roll stole the show. Salty, sweet, creamy and crunchy, it featured perfectly fried shrimp wrapped in a delicate, super crisp batter, its richness offset by the tangy cucumber inside and the spicy, sweet crab outside. The Sexy Girl Roll came in a close second, with its shrimp playing against the spicy tuna topping. The seaweed salad dominated in the Crispy Roll. It was delicious but it just wasn’t as complex as the other two.

Next, the steaming bowl of ramen arrived. The rich, complex broth was dark with pork, miso and mushrooms. The pork belly had been well braised and sliced thin, leaving its fat behind and bringing only its meaty flavor and texture. The ramen noodles were thin and plentiful, mingling comfortably with sprouts and seaweed bits and a couple of crazy, coin-shaped fish cakes that looked like Neco wafers and tasted of, well, not much at all, delivering instead a uniquely snappy texture. But this soup was really all about the broth, an all day, long simmered umami concoction that kept delivering layers of flavor with every slurp.

On a subsequent lunch visit, we had udon on our minds and chose the Tempura Udon Soup, $12.99. We also sampled the steak teriyaki bento box, $9.95, with a choice of salad or miso soup. I chose the soup, which was piping hot and typically rich, salty and filled with umami flavors punctuated by bits of seaweed, scallion and tiny cubes of soft tofu. It was warming and delicious.

The star of the bento box — a black and red lacquered vessel divided into four compartments — was not the steak, which was slightly overdone for my taste and slathered with the expected sweet, salty, glossy sauce, served on a delicious bed of fried onions. It was the shrimp shumai, three little deep-fried shrimp dumplings shaped like tater tots. They were sweet with fresh shrimp and served with a drizzle of soy sauce. I could have eaten a bucket of them. The California roll was also surprisingly good, so fresh and flavorful, a great foil for the salty, sweet teriyaki.

Our udon, served good and hot, featured a mild broth and was loaded with ropy, slippery udon noodles. The tempura — two shrimp, two broccoli, a giant onion ring, a slice of zucchini and one of sweet potato — arrived on a separate plate with a soy dipping sauce.

If you like shrimp, you must try Kaenyama’s tempura. It’s sweet and fresh and crunchy and a quick dip in the sauce then into that broth took it to a new place. The broccoli was beyond good. The fry on the moister vegetables — the onion, zucchini and sweet potato — could have been a bit darker for our taste, but we ate them all up all the same.

So if you’re missing Beirut’s, consider consoling yourself with a trip to its replacement. In our ever changing restaurant scene, its a great reason to embrace the change.

j.blanchette@theday.com

Twitter: @2Petunia