Tag: sashimi

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
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

Categories
Japanese

Sashimi Shinsengumi 刺身新鮮組 – Crows Nest NSW Restaurant Review

My partner took us to this paint and sip thing in Crows Nest, which was great because it meant that I finally got to try the Sashimi Shinsengumi takeaway platter from around the corner. Though I’ve never gotten my act together or friends in a row to book out their restaurant for omakase, this $140 of nigiri (2x$50+1x$40 sets) made for a reasonable substitute. While I think that a little bit of variety would have been nice in the form of temaki or other things, the price to performance ratio here was pretty good, with generous servings of all fish provided. My partner, who I think has a bias against sushi that’s not eaten within a restaurant, would tell you that the sushi lost points the moment it left the door, but I think it retained its freshness and quality by the time we ate it.

This was way better than the other paint and sip ladies’ cheeseboards.

Sashimi Shinsengumi 刺身新鮮組
5/7-11 Clarke St, Crows Nest NSW 2065
0402 359 697

Categories
Japanese Korean

Sushi LAB – Belmore NSW Restaurant Review

Sushi LAB is a local inter-Sea of Japan collaboration serving a mixture of Korean and Japanese dishes in a family-oriented vibe, complete with children playing on iPads sipping from juice boxes and very nice service.

The deluxe sashimi ($37.50) was a well priced assortment of 15 pieces of seafood. I enjoyed the surprising inclusion of marinated octopus, though was not so fond of the giant oysters. The surf clam I felt was a bit icy at service, so I left my second piece (my partner does not eat such unfamiliar sea creatures without a fight) until the end of the meal to allow it to thaw a bit. Overall I felt this was well priced with good quality of salmon in particular.

I enjoyed this dragon roll ($20.80), though some may scoff at the choice. Sometimes you just need a dirty, non-traditional snack of tempura prawn, crab salad, eel, and teriyaki-mayonnaise to ruin your macros.

This wagyu beef ramyun (spicy, $17.80) was actually great. The flavours of the soup, though not very spicy, were very enjoyable, as was the bean sprout which inspired me to cook some more bean sprout related dishes at home the next few days. The beef was tasty and not too fatty, and the noodles, though probably not super special in and of themselves, were cooked to a degree of perfection unknown to this blogger’s girlfriend who do anything with instant noodles except immerse them in hot water.

OVERALL
I think we had quite a nice meal at this small family restaurant, and wouldn’t hesitate to go back.

Sushi LAB
328 Burwood Rd, Belmore NSW 2192
(02) 9758 9720

Categories
Japanese

Roppongi Japanese Restaurant – Wollongong NSW Restaurant Review

Wollongong instituion for over thirty years and recommended by some guy on Reddit as the best Japanese food in Wollongong, Roppongi was the first restaurant we ever dined in at in Wollongong following the October 2021 COVID-19 repoening. It didn’t live up to the hype.

DECOR
While Roppongi looks quite casual from the outside, its interior is well designed, with plenty of wood panelling and features that lend a more traditional Japanese vibe to the place. There are two separate dining rooms, and after our vaccination records were checked we were lead to a timber floored room where we were instructed to remove our shoes before entering the dining room where we had the option of sitting on the floor, or for the less flexible of us, dangling our legs under the table.

The combination sashimi ($18) was the most impressive dish of the night, with fresh tasting fish and what I think was likely freshly ground wasabi. The real deal.

The vegetable tempura ($14.80) was unexpected. Most of the time when we order vegetable tempura we are given discrete slices of vegetables that have been coated in tempura batter and deep fried. Roppongi’s version was served as clumps of shredded vegetables mashed together, giving it a quality reminiscent of those vague deep fried vegetable patties. Also strange to this dish was that roughly thirty minutes later we were served a bowl of udon soup to go with it, only to have the waiter return after a few more minutes, ask us if we’d touched it, and take it down to the next table. Keep in mind this was only a day after the state started lifting out of its COVID-19 restrictions.

The Vinegared Combination ($12) of vinegar-marinated cucumber and seafoods was quite nice, though I feel they could’ve cleaned the mussels more as I definitely had to spit some beard out of my mouth. On top of this, I felt that the choice to add seafood extender to an otherwise quite nice dish of sea animals was a strange one that kind of cheapened the vibe of the entire dish.

The featured component of the Teppanyaki Beef Rolls ($16.80) was quite nice, with tender juicy beef wrapped around garlic and spring onions. The side component, the stir fried vegetables, were pretty disappointing and reminiscent of something you’d get from a cheap Chinese takeaway, with plenty of low-cost bulk added through onion.

The Chicken Skewers ($8) with onion and capsicum were, as you an see here, a little burnt. The flavour of the soy saue on the chicken was good, but the burntness of the vegetables as well as the reappearance of onion in this dish let it down.

COMMENTS
Ultimately I was disappointed. While the sashimi was truly good, the rest of our meal was quite off-kilter, and if this is the best Japanese food that Wollongong has to offer then Sydney is only 70km down the road.

Roppongi Japanese Restaurant
1/102 Market St, Wollongong NSW 2500
(02) 4226 3243