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15/20

If there’s one chef that should be cooking in full view of the dining public, it’s Mikihito Nagai.

The owner, kitchen talisman and namesake behind specialist Margaret River tempura restaurant Miki’s Open Kitchen, Nagai is someone who seems to have a firm grasp of this whole work-life balance thing.

He jokes with guests and his fellow chefs. He talks to staff in measured tones. He beams a megawatt smile that lights up the room like the bat-signal.

He is cool, calm, collected and seemingly very content: understandable, I think, for a surf-obsessed Japanese chef that came to the South West 20 years ago in search of waves.

He is the antithesis of the played-out “angry chef” character that was once so common in restaurants. Or at least in 2013, anyway: the year that Nagai and wife Mai took over a former beauty salon and made magic happen. (Encouragingly, the last decade has seen hospitality begin changing its ways and address some of the industry’s less admirable aspects.)

When Miki’s opened, one could order a la carte. Today, the food is set-menu only with guests opting for either the Miki’s Trust option ($88) or the longer Miki’s Complete ($107): a procession of 20-ish bites served over eight courses and two hours. If finances allow, the extended director’s cut is the way to go and best illustrates Nagai’s mission to unify east and South West.

If I didn’t go the Complete, I would have missed out on local water chestnut coated in a delicate batter and precision-fried to retain its juicy crunch. (Why is Miki’s tempura so good, you ask? Frying in cold-pressed canola oil doctored with some sesame oil for flavour and heat control helps, as does changing the oil in each of the restaurant’s two pots between each evening’s sittings.)

The nut is grown by a small Rosa Brook farmer in microscopic quantities and is only available fresh for a month, so Nagai can’t serve it to everyone. (You get half a nut as part of the opening, five-snack salvo). It’s teamed with a dab of hatcho miso, a long-fermented red miso synonymous with Okazaki: a city close to Nagai’s hometown of Nagoya in Japan’s Aichi prefecture.

The vivid Manjimup-grown crimson pearl potato enlivened with a sharp mayo spiked with yuzukosho is another Complete menu exclusive. (The yuzukosho – a popular Japanese condiment made by fermenting chilli and fragrant peel from the Japanese citrus, yuzu – is made using fruit grown by the same water chestnut farmer.) Small sake cups filled with a comforting potato, white miso and truffle soup ran across both menus and showcased local Margaret River black truffle.

But enough about tubers. It’s impossible to talk about tempura and Japanese food generally without talking about seafood. Which makes the otsukuri add-on ($19; “an additional plate that imitates traditional Japanese sashimi”) an attractive prospect.

Two bricks of Fremantle bigeye tuna thrilled with their firm chew and savour, but ceviche-style farmed Tassie salmon and sweet Japanese scallops felt ho-hum after such interesting local ingredients, especially considering that many fish taste their best and fattiest during the cooler months. As it turns out, ocean swells at this time of year stop small local fishing boats from heading out, so Nagai and long-serving head chef Solomon Yates don’t have access to the winter fish that they’d like. All the more reason to return in summer.

For now, better to enjoy WA goodies like fried Shark Bay scallop accompanied by a verdant matcha salt (Nagai says the drier, denser local scallop is better for cooking while juicier, Japanese scallops are best raw). Or sweet cooked crab meat immortalised via the pressed sushi, oshizushi. And who knew that the bubbly, tapioca-like rice pearls masago were the spring-summer accessory that pink snapper didn’t know it needed?

Despite Nagai’s jovial demeanour, he’s clearly someone that sweats the details and appreciates the handmade. Miki’s jet-black charcoal ramen noodles are custom-made in Sydney. The restaurant’s wavy blue plates are supplied by renowned Aichi potter Tetsuo Nagae using clay offcuts. The amazake (fermented rice) that sous chef Habib Pinter mixes with mandarin to dress a lush chocolate and hazelnut cream is made in-house.

Nagai’s eponymous open kitchen and charisma are undoubtedly part of Miki’s appeal. But as I reflect on the restaurant’s 11-year journey, it strikes me that there’s another openness at play: an openness to reimagining South West ingredients and Japanese food culture through the lens of the other. The result is an imaginative cuisine that was born in Asia, grew up in Australia, but has come of age on Bussell Highway.

Miki’s remains one of WA’s more unexpected, yet deeply gratifying dining prospects. It is also – along with the hatted de’sendent – one of Margaret River’s few whole-package restaurants you’d celebrate a special occasion at. I couldn’t imagine the 6285 without it.