Give the flavors of the season a try

Beef, onion ginger sauce, eggplant, shiso and sweet potato cake, part of a recent six-course tasting meal (contact for cost)

Nestled in the heart of Honolulu, Japanese restaurant Nanzan Giro Giro offers its guests a unique dining experience through its monthly menu and gourmet dishes.

“This is a tasting menu restaurant,” says chef Yoshihiro Matsumoto, who established Nanzan Giro Giro in April 2011. “This menu is my favorite.”

For September, it featured a six-course meal (call for updated cost) that began with a starter (salmon roe, sweet potato chips, prosciutto, Japanese taro sauce and green cooked kiriboshi daikon radish); followed by a broth (tai snapper, sesame tofu, green onion and pine nuts; mukotzuke (bluefin tuna, eggplant tofu, shiso and wasabi); a main dish (beef, salmon yuan grill, heart of the palms and sticky rice, yuba soymilk paper ankake soup, wasabi, bubuarare rice cracker); a sea main dish (lobster, black cod, and tomato bisque); and rice (tachiuo fish, maitake sweet corn rice, broth and mitsuba).

The restaurant also offers a nine-course menu for $165, which features two additional dishes of caviar, Kona abalone, foie gras, kabocha squash and duck, mustard seed ponzu vinegar, yam potato, shiso and uni soy sauce.

Although Matsumoto has yet to debut the restaurant’s October menu, he says the selection is unique each month, utilizing seasonal ingredients and that both he and the staff love to hear feedback from guests.

“I love working here,” he says. “I appreciate it so much.”