Review: The Fish At FS Maui’s New KOMO Sent Me Tumbling Backwards Through Time

Thomas Smith3 weeks ago

KOMO. Credit: Thomas Smith/Bay Area Telegraph

KIHEI, HAWAII – I’m sitting in the lobby of the Four Seasons Maui, and I’m nearly in tears.

I’ve just taken a bite of sea urchin, and I’m having a Proustian moment. I’m not sure how to describe this, but it tastes like the experience of being near the ocean.

Of my childhood summers spent on the Maine coastline. Of the crashing waves of the Pacific, as my wife and I drove along Highway 1 almost a decade ago, newly arrived transplants in California. Of lounging by the surf with our three kids years later, building sand forts.

All that tumbling through time, evoked instantly—and entirely automatically, like the flipping of a switch—by a tiny piece of roe.

Good fish, I suppose, has that power. Or at least, it does when prepared by the hands of the chefs at FS Maui’s new sushi restaurant, KOMO.

Sushi is having a moment on Maui in general, and in Wailea in particular. It started years ago with Morimoto Maui at the nearby Andaz, and multiple other Wailea resorts now have super-premium sushi spots.

If the Four Seasons was going to join that trend, though, they clearly were going to have to do it their way. KOMO is the result.

Situated in a previously little-used section of the lobby (I used to sit there when my now 9-year-old son passed out in his stroller and I needed a quiet place), KOMO has entirely transformed the space.

It’s built around a massive fountain, a focal point that was there all along but is suddenly prominent and noticeable, ringed with the restaurant’s tables and dramatic lighting.

KOMO is small, with only 15 tables and 14 sushi bar seats. But it goes to enormous effort to curate a very specific experience.

Case in point? Executive Chef Kiyokuni “Kiyo” Ikeda couldn’t find a source of fish in Hawaii, or even on the mainland, that met his exacting standards. So instead, he chose to fly fresh fish in daily from the world-renowned fish markets of Tokyo.

The sea urchin that sent me on a trip backwards through my life is emblematic of the control and precision this approach allows.

Hawaii has sea urchins in abundance. But the water is apparently too warm to make them perfect. Better to bring them in from the absolute best purveyors, caught in the absolute best places for sea urchins in the whole world!

One fantastic way to let KOMO’s chefs showcase this quality—and the variety of fish they find in Tokyo’s markets—is to get out of their way.

Specifically, this means ordering a Mystery Box—a ten-piece selection of sushi that the chef chooses based entirely on his whim and delivers to you personally at your table.

The explanation of the rolls alone lasted over a minute. And it wasn’t filler either—there was a lot to say about this fish, from the huge diversity of species to the exact place each specimen was caught or how it was prepared.

In explaining the sushi, KOMO’s chefs are clearly aware of every specific fish traveling through their restaurant. The result is a selection of rolls unlike any you’ll find elsewhere.

This isn’t a stuffy place, though. There’s an element of playfulness to the experience of eating at KOMO. And there’s a strong element of performance.

The drama of opening the Mystery Box feels like unlocking a little treasure chest, albeit one filled with dainty bits of fish.

And there are other performative elements, too. When you’re first seated at the restaurant, a server appears, takes a small glass from your place setting, and pours tea into it in midair—the long stream of flowing tea looking a bit like the rainbows you’ll often see over the mountains outside.

KOMO also invites guests to get in on the experience.

One of my favorite dishes was a toro rice bowl, with fresh tuna and flanked by bowls of seaweed. To eat it, you grab a piece of seaweed, scoop up some rice and fish, and make your own hand roll.

Even simple Japanese cuisine staples turn into little tableside vignettes. Most American wasabi is actually horseradish dyed green.

At KOMO, they grate real wasabi from a giant green root on a sharkskin grater right at your table.

This performative element continues with dessert. A dessert bento box mirrors the experience of the Mystery Box, but with little cakes and pastries instead of fish.

Another dessert features bright purple ube ice cream, with a fish-shaped hot pineapple pie.

Although these playful and creative dishes are clearly a cornerstone at KOMO, the restaurant is happy to make you basic rolls too, or even to let you order simpler stuff for kids.

My wife and I visited with our three sons (FS Maui hosted us so we could photograph and review the resort—thanks!), and KOMO made them simple California rolls, salmon avocado, and even (gasp!) mac and cheese.

KOMO also has terrific cocktails, and a great selection of sakes to accompany each part of your meal.

For adults who aren’t big on raw fish, KOMO has dishes like an Australian Wagyu steak that are delicious as well.

Honestly, though, the best things at KOMO were the simplest. Rice and fish, prepared with your own hands. A simple piece of snapper—albeit flown in from the best seafood markets in the world.

And of course, that sea urchin. To prepare that specific dish, the chefs barely had to touch it—all they needed to do was scoop out the roe and put it on my plate.

Yet that simplicity belies a wildly complex web of steps and decisions that got the world’s best urchin from the frigid waters of the Northern Pacific to my table in Maui, with a pit stop in Tokyo.

And it belies a deep level of intention that makes KOMO special, and perfect for the Four Seasons.

FS Maui isn’t flashy or pretentious. It’s an understated place. Staying there feels simple, warm, timeless.

But that simplicity is realized through thousands of tiny actions and decisions that quietly underpin the whole experience.

I’m reminded of a story a friend once told me about a duck. From above, ducks look like they’re effortlessly gliding through the water, in silence and stillness. But look under the water, and that quiet movement is driven by the furious paddling of two inexhaustible little webbed feet.

FS Maui feels a bit like that. Everything appears simple. Yet everything—from the color of the light in the spa (synchronized to your circadian rhythms) to the barware in the lobby (hand-fired by a local ceramic artist)—is carefully considered, pored over, obsessed over. There’s a lot going on under the surface that leads to the serenity of the final experience.