Category: Japanese

Categories
Japanese

Miko Miko – Brighton-Le-Sands NSW Restaurant Review

Bucking the trend of Korean-run Japanese restaurants in Sydney is Miko Miko, a relatively new Chinese-run Japanese restaurant in the coastal suburb of Brighton-Le-Sands, replacing the long standing LUCK SUSHI. We paid a visit to them relatively late on a Wednesday night, to see if they were deserving of all the extremely mixed reviews that they had received on Google Maps.

The salmon sashimi (3 pieces for $7, $14 as pictured) cannot be faulted. It is difficult to do wrong when your only job is to purchase and then slice some fish, and it hit the craving that my partner had that led us to this restaurant in the first place. The grated fresh wasabi, rather than the el cheapo fake stuff from the tube, was noted and appreciated.

The gyudon ($18.80) was really quite good. The beef had a rich flavour, and the portion was adequate to flavour all of the rice. The egg yolk was perfect in its consistency, and again soaked through the rice once popped to flavour almost every grain. The pickles added an appropriate brightness, and I wonder if I could make this at home, though I wouldn’t know what to do with 980g of pickled daikon and 980g of pickled ginger.

The assorted tempura ($15.80) was fine, and though I did not love the prawn, I thought the eggplant tempura was really delicious. Tempura is not something that is easy to do at home, in view of all the oil required, though I do think the portion was quite small for the price asked.

Thoughts
Visiting a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people, with almost the entire breadth of Japanese cuisine on the menu gave me pause, but ultimately their food was quite alright. I don’t know that I’d get the tempura again though, as good as the eggplant was.

Miko Miko
309 Bay St, Brighton-Le-Sands NSW 2216

Categories
Drinks Japanese

Ogu Ogu – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

This medium muscat grape drink with lychee ($10.50) was actually very yummy, but was it worth 15 minutes of my life spent at work to pay for it, and then another 5 minutes standing around waiting for it to be made?

Probably not.

I do love muscat grape though – the kasugai premium grape jelly beans are out of this world.

Ogu Ogu
127-133 Burwood Rd, Burwood NSW 2134

(tagged as bubble tea because even though it’s not bubble tea, that’s the general vibe of it)

Categories
Japanese

Edomae Sushi – Burwood NSW Restaurant Review

I had lunch here with a friend a few days ago and it was actually very good. I didn’t expect a huge amount going in, but it really blew my expectations. There were so many varieties of sea animals that you don’t normally find, with an extensive ‘market price’ menu with vaguely variable pricing, as well as fixed-priced nigiri and gunkan.

Interesting things that I had included fugu, spanner crab, and akanishigai (whelk). My dining friend ate these weird things with me like a champ, but did not enjoy them.

I want to go back.

UPDATE
I finally got a chance to eat here with my girlfriend.

Like before, the variety was excellent, and everything was good.

Except this negitoro and daikon pickle, which was not exciting.

Everything here was very exciting. Salmon Roe (ikura) ($9 for 2). Sea Urchin (uni) ($12.80 for 2) were both delicous, especially with the ikura being not too salty. The Chu-toro ($4.50 for a single piece) was fatty and melty. It would be amazing to have all 3 in a hand roll, but not something this place currently offers. The salmon 3 kinds ($6.60) was just 3 kinds of salmon. Not particularly exciting.

All other fishes were also good, including a number of white fish that I neglected to remember the names of. We had engawa, but the ones we took off the conveyer did not get named on the receipt.

This may have honestly been our first takoyaki ($8.80) since Japan in 2017. I think we ate so much of it back then that we couldn’t face eating it for another 7 years. Not bad.

The concept of soft shell crab ($5.90) becomes spookier to me the more I think about it. So I don’t think about it. I just eat it, and it’s delicious. The oyster katsu hand roll ($5.50) was safe from hungry deer.

Edomae Sushi Burwood
Shop 1/39 Belmore St, Burwood NSW 2134

Categories
Bakery Japanese

Kurimu – Port Melbourne VIC Restaurant Review

Ignore the location heading – Kurimu is a chain bakery, so it doesn’t really matter where I got this particular original choux ($4.20) from (Westfield Hurstville NSW, by the way) – it would be like going to a Breadtop and writing about a particular outlet, as if there were significant store-to-store variation in the high uniformity products that they produce.

This original choux was a really great snack, with a crunchy buttery almond-coated exterior and a super smooth creamy filling. The most important factor for any dessert, its sweetness level, notched a perfect “not too sweet” from both me and my partner.

Really worth a try the next time you walk past a stall

Kurimu
Multiple Locations – see website.

Categories
Japanese Korean

Hiroba – Strathfield NSW Restaurant Review

My partner was keen for some Japanese and I some Korean – from the outside, Hiroba’s little shop hugging the wall of Strathfield train station seemed like the perfect compromise.

Following in the tradition of Korean people serving Japanese food, Hiroba offers an extensive Japanese menu with the addition of some Korean restaurant staples. The Japanese izakaya style decor and Japanese translations on the menu provided an illusion that did not last long, shattered as soon as we unexpectedly received banchan upon ordering.

We initially pondered ordering a sushi or sashimi set, but decided on a la carte nigiri instead, making sure that our food was all thriller and no filler. The salmon, salmon belly, tuna, and snapper nigiri was all good and fresh, with thick and generous pieces of each. The tuna I thought was a bit expensive, coming in at $8 for two pieces, whilst the rest was reasonably priced ($5 for two pieces).

The mixed tempura (medium size) came with three tempura prawns and a mixture of what was mostly tempura tubers. Though freshly cooked, i thought the quality of the tempura was only middling, and felt that it was not as light and airy as good tempuras can be. We were saddened by the lack of variety in the tempura vegetables, with mostly root vegetables on offer. The only thing that really stood out was a single piece of tempura enoki – otherwise all of the tempura vegetables were quite samey.

I didn’t really like the flavour of the Ox Beef Soup, though if I’m being honest that could very well be more of a personal preference. The entire soup had a smoked taste, owing to what looked like sliced silverside beef on the inside. The overall theme of this soup could be described as wholesome feeling but not great tasting, though I did catch the chef having his own sit down meal of this soup. I assume the chef wouldn’t eat something not good, so it’s probably just our own preference that led us to not like this.

VERDICT
While the sushi at Hiroba was indeed good, would I go back again? Probably not. Strathfield holds a huge untapped potential of East Asian cuisine, and Hiroba just didn’t stand out enough for me to go back. I’d rather try something new.

Hiroba
1 Albert Rd, Strathfield NSW 2135
(02) 9763 1222