481

481 Gourmet is the Nikkei-Peruvian-Japanese fusion dining room of chef Matías Gastañaga, a Uruguayan chef trained in Lima at Maido and at Tokyo's Tsukiji fish market, opened in 2012 on Avenida Roosevelt and built one of South America's most distinctive Nikkei programmes. The restaurant occupies a converted 1990s villa with a contemporary glass-walled main dining room and a small open-flame robatayaki grill.

The cuisine is Peruvian-Japanese fusion with deep Uruguayan beef-and-seafood sourcing. Signatures include a Uruguayan beef tartare with Peruvian aji amarillo and Japanese ponzu; a hand-cut Uruguayan beef tataki with Peruvian rocoto pepper; a Peruvian aji-amarillo ceviche with Atlantic-Uruguayan fish; a Japanese tempura platter with Atlantic shellfish; the famous '481 maki', a signature roll with Atlantic-Uruguayan shrimp and Peruvian-aji emulsion.

The wine list runs to 200 references with a Uruguayan Tannat core and a tightly chosen Argentine-Chilean section. The sake programme runs to twenty-plus bottlings, the deepest sake list in Uruguay.

The room runs at moderate volume; service is precision-Nikkei. 481 Gourmet is the village's most distinctive contemporary dining and the room first-time visitors should book before the institutional addresses.

481 Gourmet is the easy-first-date room in Punta del Este, quieter than La Bourgogne, less formal than Garzón, and the Nikkei-fusion register is genuinely distinctive. Book the corner two-top by the open robatayaki grill.