Tetsuya's - 529 Kent Street, Sydney

I have finally been to the infamous Tetsuya's, world renowned restaurant and Sydney's fine dining institution! I went with my husband for our first year wedding anniversary.  It  really is a total experience from the moment you walk through the front door.  If you haven't already you really need to experience Tetsuya's at least once. If I was rich I would go every time they change the menu.  Everything about the night was fabulous.

We got, what I thought the best table in the restaurant in the larger of the two rooms and in the middle by the window overlooking the serene, peaceful and zen court-yard.  "Ah the serenity" I kept saying every time I looked out there.  

At the end of the night the waiter, who was very informative, attentive and friendly,  gave us a print out of the menu with a little personal note on it, which they probably have a hundred already printed out in preparation for the many couples celebrating their "Anniversary's" and "Birthday's" haha!  Anyway I thought it was a nice touch.

My husband had the 12 course degustation with matching wines.  I had a glass of Champagne and a few sips of his wines throughout the night.  There were a total of 7 wines, some lasting 2 courses.

I'm not going to rate each dish as I normally do as I feel I probably won't do the dishes justice with my amateur writing and ingredient descriptions.  Oh and I also didn't take photos of all the courses, as I was too busy just enjoying the night!

Above is the prettiest dish of the night "Salad of the Sea".  I've never had raw scallop before, it was beautifully sweet.  I loved the caviar the best, the pops of saltiness were so tasty with the more subtle seafood.

Confit of ocean Petuna trout with fennel and unpasteurised ocean trout caviar.  This is Tetsuya's signature dish.  The waiter told us that when Tetsuya took it off the menu a few years back a lot of customers' complained and so he gave in to public demand and put it back on the degustation.  I'm so glad he did! It seriously is one delicious piece of fish!  

Steamed tian of Queensland spanner crab with bean curd, foie gras and junsai.  A combination of subtle flavours but then it went up a notch with the rich foie gras.  The junsai , a cultivated vegetable was very wierd. Green bits with a clear coating to it.  It had no flavour and really wasn't adding anything good to the dish.

Roasted breast of duck with eggplant and almond.  I should have asked about this dish more as the eggplant concoction was strong with spice and tasted incredible!   I say almost overtaking the duck. . . which was super tender indeed.

Green apple and mint ice-cream and potato mille feulle.  This was a dessert like no other that I have had before.  Maybe because I don't really have a stomach for desserts.  I'd rather have entree, main, main!   The granita was so fresh and zingy packed with basil hits.  The mint ice-cream was so nice and creamy.   If I ate here every week I think I would develop a dessert stomach.

Floating island and creme anglaise, chocolate fondant with hazelnut and praline.  OMG!  As I said I am not a dessert person but this comes close to the fave dish of the night.  The fluffiness and lightness of the meringue was so soft and melt in the mouth I could have eaten two more at least!  Then as you dig in for the second spoonful you hit the chocolate inside and the hazelnut, wow!   It's like a Fererro Rocher re-worked into a cloud.  The custard is spotted with vanilla bean specks and was just the right amount of sweetness.  I could've licked the bowl!

Other courses that I had that I still remember dancing on my tongue was the savoury custard with Avruga.  That was so silky and the Avruga popped up to the surface with each wooden spoon mouthful.  

The slow braised lamb shoulder was also incredibly tasty, tender and devoured quite quickly despite it being the eighth course, the last savoury course.

My friends asked me if I was full at the end and I can definitely say yes!  Not my usual I've stuffed myself too much  I'm going to vomit full, but a perfectly happy satisfied full. I definitely could not have done the wine degustation though. 

I definitely can't recommend enough that you have to go here and experience the impeccable service, amazing dishes and the all round workings of a top class restaurant that has been operating for 23 years. That in its' self says something about a restaurant in Sydney doesn't it?

All you can eat Japanese!!!

Wasabi Bistro - Shop 6B-8, 417-431 Bourke Street, Surry Hills

Some weeks ago my husband and I went and ate all that we could Japanese style. I bought a voucher and it was all you can eat for only $59.  We went on a Sunday night and the restaurant was still pretty busy.  The service was attentive and seeing as we had a voucher I was kind of thinking we might get overlooked a bit or they night ignore us as we were ordering pretty much every 10 minutes for the 90 minutes that the voucher was valid for.  We were told this at the beginning so it was clear what we could do, which was pretty much “order as much as you wanted and eat it in 90 mins.”  If you did not finish anything you ordered you had to pay for it.  As if that would happen!  Haha!

This is what we ate minus the edamame beans which I forgot to take a pic of, but you all know what they look like. . . 

Natural oysters with salmon roe and shoyu and lemon - fresh!  7.5/10

Mixed sashimi of tuna, salmon and kingfish - nice big pieces!  9/10

Salmon sashimi x 2 - so delish!  9/10

Agedashi tofu - Had lots of sauce on the bottom which I liked a lot! 8/10

Beef tataki - A little bit chewy and not as neatly presented as I hoped. 6.5/10

Salmon carpaccio - So good with the red onion and mayo. 8/10

Seared salmon nigiri - my fave sushi. 8/10

Wagyu beef steak - The meat was tasty but too much of the Yakisoba sweet sauce. 6.5/10

Teriyaki salmon, good portion and standard taste. 7/10

Chicken karage, quite disappointed, not crunchy enough and again too much Yakisoba sauce.  The brown sweet sauce. 6/10.

Dessert, green tea ice cream with tea leaves sprinkled on top.  Flavour was great but texture a bit icy.
7/10.

Towards the end of our 90 minutes, the manager came over to us as said since we were eating quite a lot (really?? haha) would we be interested in purchasing another "All-you-can- eat" voucher for the same price through the restaurant rather than Groupon, which by the way receives 40% commission!  So we thought why not, service was good, ambience was good for a casual dining place and we had not even tasted many of the other dishes like the Okonomiyaki pancakes or the Donburis or the Dynamite roll!  I think we ate more than double what we paid, so overall, it was great!

I recommend Wasabi Bistro for some standard pretty tasty Japanese dishes at reasonable prices.  No stand outs but a good option to satisfy that craving of sashimi or salmon.

The Rest of Tokyo Eats . . . .

--> So it has been a while since this Tokyo trip so I’ve decided this is the last post as I have forgotten what everything  was, well not really but I want to blog about different things now.  There is still one lot of pics I can’t seem to find at the moment of our first meal in Tokyo and that was great, it was the best chicken karage of the entire trip, in fact the best I had ever tasted.

 

We literally walked a few steps to the right of our hotel for this traditional Jap restaurant as everyone was tired and still a bit hung over.

 

We sat in a booth with a touchscreen to order our meal from.  It was only in Japanese but lucky it had pictures!  First up we ordered a cold ramen salad with pork which was huge!  It was the first time I had cold ramen and mixed up with the dressing lettuce and egg it was really nice.

 

 

Then we had to order sashimi.   It was beautifully presented.  Salmon, octopus, tuna, squid, some type of white fish and conch meat.  The little purple leaves on the squid in the picture were really nice and peppery; in fact it’s called “Tade” water peppers to be eaten raw with sweet fish  because they have alkaline properties and can balance the acidity of the fish in the same way as other raw vegetables do.

 

Pretty much everywhere we ate I wanted to try the chicken karage to compare to the first lot I ate.  This one was pretty good, not the worst and not the best.  The skin wasn’t crunchy enough.  I think the next dish was beef?  Not sure.  Then good old agedashi tofu, which was really silky inside and crunchy on the outside and dumplings which were tasty as always.  Was pretty full so I didn’t order dessert, but the others did.  Crème brulee was really yum and then the Japanese style cheesecake which I didn’t taste.

 

In contrast to this delicious meal, there was one night where we were struggling to find a place to eat open late on a Sunday night.  This place was opened and looked a bit busy so we walked up to a find a grumpy fat man as the only staff there.  We ordered off a Japanese menu and a few pictures.  It was a yakitori joint so we couldn’t really go wrong with charcoal cooked meat right?  

 

Within the mixed yakitori plate we ordered two of were liver bits, possibly heart bits and some type of tubular innard from an animal.  Lucky one of them was normal chicken meat, one was chicken skin, and maybe the third edible yakitori stick was beef. . . .  It was a fun experience nevertheless.  The accompaniment dish was conch meat and some type of roe which was really fishy and not nice.

This lovely picture above was of another chicken karage we ordered at an Izakaya in Shibuya.  This is also like a tapas place.  You order lots of side dishes to share while you drink.  I had this with sake and the others had beers.  If I remember correctly this chicken karage was pretty good.  Next to is yakitori of pork and shallots which were also very tasty.

 

And ramen!  How can I not write about this delicious, tasty, salty, broth of goodness and noodles?  I think in the 6 days we were there I ate about 6 bowls of ramen!  I ate mostly the chilli pork one which I had never had in Sydney before.   It came with a round mound of mince pork, shredded shallots and spinach.  The broth was the perfect balance of oiliness to I guess clear brothiness, chilliness and saltiness.  It didn’t make you really thirsty afterwards either.  It was so good and for only 800yen, $9AUD you get a whole set of the ramen, a bowl of rice and dumplings!  Such good value on all levels!!   At this one place where we had this ramen, it was a vending machine restaurant.  We had a bit of trouble working the machine and matching up the pictures on the wall to the button, but it all worked out and by the last bowl, we had it down to a tee!    

 

We also had tempura udon for lunch one day at a traditional noodle house.  This prawn was the biggest fattest tempura prawn I had had.  So meaty and juicy! 

 

Here are my last pics,  the combination chow- mein I had at the airport ( by this stage we all felt like something non Japanese), it was pretty good, the grilled fish with rice and veges on the plane.  Not very nice, the fish was too fishy.   And then for another meal on the plane I had  these soba noodles which were really nice.  Mixed with the sweet soy, wasabi and shallots it was a good last Japanese meal of the trip.

 

I think I have already said this but Japanese food is really a cuisine that one can never get sick of. . . .

All aboard the sushi train!

--> I definitely could not have missed a sushi train while on the Tokyo trip.   This one was on Omotesando Street near Harajuku.  

So it looked like any typical sushi train with the chef in the middle making to order any sushi you wanted,  but the first thing I noticed that we didn’t have in Sydney was the self-serve, free, green tea.  The green tea came in powder form in a little pot with a cute little spoon and then there is a hot water dispenser at the table built into the counter, so you just fill up your cup and wallah!  Your instant green tea which tastes much better than a tea bag!  Forgot to take a photo of the hot water dispenser, but it is a genius idea.  We shouldn’t have to pay for green tea when having sushi!

 

The first sushi I had was the grilled prawn sushi with white onion and mayo.  Delish!  Then I had to have the “takoyaki”, octopus balls made to order.  They were so good.  Hot balls of batter and tempura leftovers with the chunks of octopus inside.  Creamy and savoury with hints of spring onions too.  I love these things.  Then I ordered the “maguro” sushi, which is raw tuna.  I love tuna sashimi.  Although this one was light coral colour, it looked more like salmon than tuna.    It wasn’t the beautiful ruby red flesh I imagined, nevertheless it was tasty.  With a splash of wasabi and soy, fresh sushi never tasted better. 

Love this silver and black plate!



Takoyaki!

Maguro

There was one that passed us on the train with what I think was a raw quail egg on top with minced raw tuna which I hadn’t seen before, but didn’t have the courage to eat it.  Also I guess it isn’t unusual, but the chef cooked/seared scallop meat in front of us on a marble bench which I thought was pretty cool.

Think this is quail egg . .
 

When I got back I was kind of sick of Japanese food,  I just craved pizza or Indian.  But since have eaten at Zushi and Sapporo already.

 

Zushi on Crown Street in Surry Hills is a cute little restaurant that serves up a really good mix of Jap food.  Not only sushi but classics such as Agedashi tofu and chicken karage which stacks up pretty well with what Tokyo had to offer.  The soft shell crab was delicious as was the tuna tataki.  Didn’t take any pics that time but I do recommend Zushi I say it is about a 8 out of 10.  Lots of couples on dates and groups, so it’s a restaurant where you can pop in impromptu style in shorts and tees if you’re lucky to get a table or it can be a dress and heels type of restaurant especially if it’s a Saturday night.

 

Sapporo in Crows Nest is also a cute little restaurant but the big screen showing the rugby makes it more suburban and has a family vibe to it.  My friend told me the owner is a rugby fanatic so hence the 2 screens.  Anyway besides that it has a good menu.  Something I have never eaten before in a Japanese restaurant was a dish of deep fried baby prawns with a light chilli batter.  With a squeeze of lemon on top I popped the whole prawns in my mouth and crunched away.  It was great!   They serve Nabemono which is the hot pot dishes.  I have to try that next time as I love hot pots.  Maybe when the weather cools down a bit.  I rate this joint 8 out of 10 as well. 

 

I really do love Japanese food very much!!!