The contents of this blog are matters of opinion formed over one more visits. There has been some artistry applied and metaphors and similes should not necessarily be taken literally. All meals are independently paid for - the author has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
My partner was recently accepted onto the anaesthetic training program for 2021, and we broke our own rules on not going out in order to celebrate. We had the $85pp tasting menu at Zushi Barangaroo, which we were able to enjoy after 30 minutes of circling the CBD to find a park. Allow me to explain.
We started off with the sashimi special, which was sliced raw whitefish with a chili ponzu dipping sauce, and garnished with some flying fish roe. I found this dish to be acceptable in freshness, and enjoyed the fish more alone than I did with the sauce.
The tuna tataki was seared yellowfin akami, crusted with sesame seeds and topped with fried leek and shisho cress. We have always been suckers for seared tuna, and enjoyed this dish. We would’ve kept the sauce too, had they not taken it away from us.
The chef’s selection of sashimi was a selection of sashimi selected by the chef. It was fresh and tasty, but certainly not a standout. There was nothing particularly fancy about this dish, a staple if you will. There are no irregularities to report.
I enjoyed the seared Hokkaido scallop in yuzu soy broth. The scallops were sweet, and complemented well by the sour-salty sauce. The radish puree was also sweet and complementary.
The corn ribs and the prawn tempura were the most divisive dishes of the meal. My partner absolutely loved the corn ribs, roasted and covered in parmesan with lime available for squeezing. She loved how juicy and sweet the corn was, and the complementary flavour of the cheese. It was certainly tempting enough for the people sitting next to us to ask what it was and order it for themselves. I’m not so much of a corn man myself so I offered one of my corns to my partner.
I enjoyed the prawn tempura. The prawns were very large and meaty, and the fluffy and fresh tempura batter was a treat. The dipping sauce and lime also worked well. I was able to trade one of my corn for one of my partners’ prawns, which produced a good result for both of us as she hates the cockroach of the sea.
The toothfish was disappointing. We were given this very small portion to share for two adults. How would we have shared it if we were just business colleagues on a business lunch? The actual quality of the toothfish was also very poor. Compared to other servings of toothfish I’ve had at other restaurants it was too firm and overcooked. I certainly expected better.
The duck teriyaki was good and provided in great quantity too. The teriyaki sauce was good with rice. I liked it more than my partner.
It is difficult to mess up white rice too badly. It mixed well with all of the different sauces we had left over. The grilled broccolini was tasty but again there was a lot of it. I did enjoy the seaweed butter flavouring but it got a bit much towards the end.
Overall we enjoyed Sushi Barangaroo. We probably wouldn’t go back for the tasting menu, but there did look to be quite a few attractive looking bentos being served for lunch. Maybe next time.
I’ve been trying to go to Danjee since July 2020, when one of my Korean colleagues mentioned it as one of the best Korean places east of Strathfield. It took me until December 2020 to get there, at which point Danjee was still serving its very limited COVID-19 menu.
Danjee’s website would not let us make a booking for lunch as it only allows bookings at least four hours in advance, however when we called they told us that we could just walk in. When we arrived we found only one other group at Danjee during our Saturday lunch sitting – probably a bad performance indicator for the business, and probably due to the confusing text on the website.
Access to Danjee is through a little suspicious-looking alleyway off George St. The dining hall we were led to features normal wooden tables with no evidence of BBQ facilities, though this is meant to be a BBQ restaurant. I later discovered that there are two whole other sections of the restaurant – one indoor and one outdoor – that feature BBQ facilities – that had been closed due to the pandemic.
Side dishes
These were our side dishes. They were all pretty good, but they weren’t refilled at all throughout our meal.
Hot stone bibimbap with beef ($20)
The hot stone bibimbap with beef ($20) was good and fresh, but didn’t really come with much beef. The beef it did come with was in t he form of mince, and easily lost when the dish was all mixed up together.
Mul Bi-Naeng Myeon (buckwheat noodles with spicy sauce in chilled soup)
The Mul Bi-Naeng Myeon (buckwheat noodles with spicy sauce in chilled soup – $18) was alright. This was my partner’s first experience with Korean cold noodles, and she was initially taken aback by the floating pieces of ice, although she eventually grew to like it as the ice mielted I really wished that they would’ve provided some scissors for the noodles – without them this dish was quite difficult to eat. As we were settling our bill our waiter asked for our opinion on this dish. He said that he himself wasn’t a big fan, as he didn’t think that the soup tasted like traditional naengmyeon, and asked us to compare the flavour with that of other restaurants. Not being a huge naengmyeon connoisseur myself I gave some awfully unhelpful but honest advice – I told him that I thought the flavour was fine, but I would’ve loved a bit more meat. He looked taken aback. Evidently two slices of meat is the gold standard.
L: LA Karubi (Marinated beef short ribs cross cut style), R: Pork Belly
Danjee’s Korean BBQ offerings are unfortunately all cooked in the main kitchen before being brought out to the dining tables. There is currently no option for at-table cooking for lunch, and in fact we had to pay a premium for chef cooked meat. We had the LA Karubi ($21) and the Pork Belly ($220. Both were fine, though I thought the portions were quite small for the price paid. There was no leaf – lettuce, sesame, or otherwise – that was offered and it really felt like quite a barebones and negative BBQ experience.
VERDICT Danjee bills itself as “Korean Fine Dining”, though I find it hard to appreciate any “fine” elements to it. What I found at Danjee was quite middling food, poor service, and a disappointing stinginess on meaty goods. I would hesitate to come back to Danjee as is.
3/5
Danjee 1-7 Albion Pl, Sydney NSW 2000 (02) 8084 9041
l’appel du vide (abstract noun, French) The self-destructive craving for salt, carbohydrates, and fat that can be satisified only by a good kebab.
Some of my fondest childhood memories revolve around eating kebabs, often as a reward for accompanying my parents to unenjoyable (for a six year old) activities such as shopping for the week’s fresh produce at Flemington markets. While the prices are no longer $5, and the food hygiene is probably much higher, this love of kebabs has remained with me ever since those formative days.
Mascot Kebab & Deli on Bourke St, not to be confused with Mascot Kebab on Botany Road, is one of the many kebab shops that deliver to my home. It is also one of the best.
This mixed kebab roll with chili and garlic sauces and tabouli ($14.50) is an excellent kebab. The fresh salad and tabouli to meat ratio is perfect. The meat is standard kebab meat for both “beef” and “chicken”, and do not stand out from the crowd. The sauce ratio is perfect, and the size is good. There are no complaints with the wrapping or packaging. I can only tell you what my mouth told me, which was that this kebab filled all the cravings that I had.
The mixed snack pack with garlic and chili sauce ($20) was good but too expensive. I would usually expect to pay around $12 for this size snack pack. Price aside, the chips were fresh and crunchy, despite having been delivered. The amount of sauce was perfect, however the amount of meat was perhaps a bit too high – a rare complaint from me.
We walked past many enticing restaurants this morning to eat at Boon Cafe, a Thai cafe, restaurant and grocery store in the Sydney CBD.
Boon Cafe has minimal dining space, we counted a total of five tables and not much room for expansion. The tables were small, but somehow able to fit all of our food, condiments, and even some flowers snugly.
We started with a Pork Skewer ($3.50), which was pretty standard fare. I found the skewer a bit too tasty/salty to eat by itself, and think it would’ve been better with some rice (which luckily they offer as a meal) .
I really enjoyed the Chicken and Ginger Congee ($12), to which we added a Century Egg ($3). They got the flavours just right, with a generous serving of ginger. The century egg I would regard as essential for this dish, to add another dimension of umami flavour and texture. We found that the congee was very wholesome and warming, and can strongly recommend this. My girlfriend remarked that as a child she hated congee, but as an adult, getting to eat these wholesome and varied congees has really taught her to love it.
The chicken wings were nothing to really write home about but not bad either. They were a little on the dry side, but the flavours were good, as was the dipping sauce. They were split in half for ease of consumption, which was a nice touch.
The Khao Dtom Sen ($14) is a member of the Winter Special menu, and not to our taste. I thought that the soup had a bit of an undesirable coat-your-mouth feel, and my partner thought it was fishy however I suspect that’s just her brain’s explanation of something she doesn’t like.
I ended up quite liking Boon Cafe, in particular the congee. I would definitely consider going back and just getting more congee! I wouldn’t stray too far from that though (although I can’t speak for the lunch or dinner menus).
This is a handsome little street cat from around the area.
It takes good planning, a childhood spent spamming clicks into party quests in MapleStory, and a generous helping of luck to secure a spot at Kuon Omakase, one of Sydney’s newest and at $200, most expensive omakase restaurants. With only two seatings of eight per night, it is an experience so exclusive that multiple senior medical colleagues expressed their dismay at not being to secure a visit for themselves in the weeks leading up to our visit. One of these colleagues even offered to pay a 40% premium to buy one of our seats. Essentially it is Japanese Dorsia.
Executive Chef Hideaki Fukada started the night by introducing us to his lobster friend, who would soon be taken into the back room and slaughtered to produce our first dish of the night: Ise Ebi Sashimi (live lobster) with toro and caviar. Premedicated with loratadine and with adrenaline in pocket, I dug into the sweet, fresh flesh of the lobster, the delicious fatty umami of the tuna belly, and the actually pretty-soft saltiness of the osetra caviar. This was, overall, a good dish to start – even if I was extremely nervous about having an allergic reaction with the first bite of a $240 meal.
Second on the menu were Aomori Hotate, sauteed scallops with butter garlic soy sauce from the Aomori region, on the northernmost part of Honshu. These were lightly flavoured, slightly tougher than I expected, and really didn’t do anything special for me. In fact, they got me a bit worried about the meal to come.
The Traditional Chawanmushi, an egg custard with fish cake, chicken, scallop, prawn, and gingko nut was next – a warm bowl of subtly flavoured goodness. The egg custard was soft and silky, and I felt like I could eat bowls and bowls of it on its own. As for the embedded proteins, the prawn was large and sweet, but unfortunately there is nothing much more to say about the chicken, scallop, or fish cake.
The kusakari tsubodai tatsuta age, fried armorhead served with a slice of okra and a slice of lemon, was really also just fine – though it doesn’t look like armorhead is a commonly eaten fish. The subtle layer of batter helped to seal in the fish’s moisture and sweetness, though at the end of the day this dish didn’t feel much more elevated than any other battered and deep fried fish that I’ve had in my life.
The uni tempura wrapped in shisho leaf was a $20 supplement and one of the best morsels of the night. The Hokkaido sea urchin was plump and creamy, with not even a hint of bitterness. The warmth added to the sea urchin through the tempura process helped make an already melty snack creamier than I could have even imagined. A must get add-on.
This giant abalone was flashed before our eyes five minutes before our next course. This is apparently the amount of time it takes to slice, dice, steam, sauce, and plate abalone.
The steamed abalone in Saikyo miso sauce was generally poorly receieved among our party. Though we appreciated the theatre of seeing the entire abalone, the complex, slightly bitter sauce was certainly very divisive. While I didn’t hate the sauce, I also didn’t really feel like this was anything above and beyond what you’d get in a standard Chinese seafood restaurant.
The Wagyu dish, a full blood MB9+ wagyu strip loin with optional foie gras ($20 supplement), was divine. The juicy meltiness of the beef paired perfectly with the rich umami of the foie gras and the semi-sweet berry sauce. Each bite of this was treasured, though I think it would’ve been just as good without the foie gras.
A fresh yuzu sorbet was offered as our meal transitioned into the nigiri zone.
Executive Chef and Owner Hideaki Fukada, caught in a non-photogenic moment, displaying his box of treasures.
The ten-piece nigiri omakase was overall an excellent journey through the Sydney Fish Markets’ best buys of the day. While it makes for a very poor food blog reading and writing experience for me to not know what exactly each piece was, our friendly chefs also did not make a huge effort to tell us. One tiny bone I have to pick is that the chef made a point to tell us that particular bites cost him $200/kg from the supply side. As a group each paying $240 for much less than a kilogram of fish, it felt like these pricings almost cheapend the experience.
Our selection was essentially an assortment of cuttlefish, o-toro, chu-toro, cuttlefish, calamari, prawn, marinated akami, imperator, tamago, and this most fabulous piece of rich and umami fatty tuna neck that I’ve chosen as the highlight photo. Each bite was a delight, but this piece really took the cake as something special to remember.
Back to our regular programming, this lobster miso soup was delicious and warming. Unfortunately no tools were supplied with which to eat the our lobster friend’s meat, and while I can infer from this that it wasn’t meant to be eaten, this didn’t stop us from trying.
The star of the night and Chef Fukada’s specialty is this amazing temaki of uni, toro, and ikura. Essentially my three favourite sea products into one, each bite of this hand roll was bursting with oceanic umami flavours. Absoutely amazing.
A hot cup of matcha green tea signified the end of our main course, and the beginning of dessert.
Our dessert was a matcha white chocolate mousse, topped with boba with a side of sliced strawberry. Small and delicate, like the rest of our meal.
VERDICT Kuon, by virtue of its exclusivity and unparalleled price-tier, is difficult to consider objectively. Most of the food, especially the bits that involved sea urchin or tuna belly, was certainly very good, however there were still some misses, not just for me, but also for the rest of our group. Comparing it to other Sydney fine dining establishments in this top-tier price range, I’d definitely consider Kuon ($240) to shoot above Quay ($290), and probably also Tetsuya’s ($250). Comparing it to other omakase experiences I’ve had in Sydney, however, I’m not sure that I can definitely say that our meal was worth three times that of our also-excellent omakase experience at Yachiyo ($80). That said, it’s probably the uni-toro-ikura hand roll, and the fact that my partner missed out (dutifully doing a locum in Victoria), that means I’ll probably be back at Kuon in due time.
Kuon Omakase Shop 20/2-58 Little Hay St, Sydney NSW 2000 0488 688 252
