Akari is the Japanese restaurant at Amanzoe, the Aman resort on a hill above Porto Heli, on the east coast of the Peloponnese. The setting is hilltop, almost 360-degree Aegean views. What it serves is washoku, Japanese, the culinary culture that puts locally sourced ingredients first, and the kitchen takes its herbs and its fish from the farmers and fishermen of the surrounding region.
Four rooms carry the Akari name worldwide, and this one is the only one in Greece. The others are at Aman New York, at Amanpuri in Phuket and at Aman Le Mélézin in Courchevel. The word means light in Japanese, and Aman runs Akari as a concept across its houses rather than as a single restaurant, calling it its signature Japanese restaurant.
Akari opens for dinner only, 6.30pm to 10pm. Guests who are not staying at Amanzoe are admitted, by reservation, and access depends on the weather of the season. The switchboard takes the booking, on +30 275 4772 888.
What comes out of the kitchen
The card is built on sushi and sashimi, with premium sake and a long wine list beside it. A sashimi selection comes at 15 pieces and a nigiri selection at eight, and both sashimi and sushi are sold one piece at a time: salmon, tuna, eel, prawn, sea bass, yellowtail, lobster, wagyu beef, and toro, the fatty tuna.
The snacks and starters come first: edamame with rock salt or a spicy dressing, hamachi usuzukuri, yellowtail carpaccio with yuzu ponzu and crispy garlic, salmon or tuna tartare under oscietra caviar, wagyu tataki with ponzu jelly and black truffle, and an Akari-style nigiri of crispy sushi rice topped with spicy tuna. The rolls include the Akari futomaki, lobster with yuzu and oscietra caviar.
The tasting is the Akari Moriawase, chef-selected: an assortment of seasonal specialities the kitchen picks and sends out as one run of flavours and textures, in five courses, with wagyu available as a supplement.
Among the hot dishes, gindara saikyo yaki is black cod marinated in sweet miso, grilled, and finished with yuzu miso. A Japanese wagyu sirloin of 100 grams is grilled and dressed with a spicy yuzu sauce. Elsewhere there is tempura, gyoza filled with the same miso-marinated black cod, udon with wagyu, and an aubergine steamed and then glazed with miso.
The room, and the terrace below it
The room is tall and glazed from floor to ceiling, so the sea is in the walls on nearly every side. The menu travels as well. Dishes from Akari are also served on Amanzoe’s pool terrace, where sushi and small plates go out with cocktails at dusk, in sight of the same water. Akari is one of five restaurants at the resort, which also keeps a bar open all day.
The hill it stands on
Amanzoe is at Agios Panteleimonas, Kranidi, Argolida, a short way from Porto Heli in Ermionida. Ed Tuttle drew it, and it was delivered in 2012. The resort puts itself forward as a modern-day Acropolis, with 360-degree views that take in olive groves and the Aegean, and it holds 38 suites alongside its spa, its beach club and its villas. From Athens International Airport it is a 2.45-hour drive, or 25 minutes by helicopter.
Who is this for
Akari suits a traveller on this stretch of Argolida who wants one dinner that is not Greek, and a guest of the resort ready for a change after a week of Mediterranean cooking. It suits a pair happy to let a kitchen choose for them, and anyone who likes raw fish handled plainly with good sake beside it. The mood is quiet and unhurried, the light going off the water as the first plates arrive, olive groves dark on the slopes below.
