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.
I had such a bad meal at Sushi Train in Maroubra that I just needed to come home and tell you all about it straight away. This is posted some time after the meal, but the content was written contemporaneously.
First, praise needs to be given to the best parts of the meal – the attentive service and the filtered, iced, table water.
The ambience and decor was also nice.
Next, we must move onto the food.
This aburi salmon “volcano” nigiri was our first and in my view probably one of the only pieces that was not awful, owing to the fact that it was drenched in mayonnaise and able to drown out the heavily disappointing rice.
This chicken katsu and cream cheese inside out roll with spicy seasoning on top was also very bad. The chicken felt old, cold, and dry. It did not appeal to me at all.
This is a layered sushi with avocado and aburi salmon, coated in a heavy layer of sauce. My partner found this acceptable, and ordered two of these dishes in favour of others, however I thought it was still quite bad.
The salmon roe (ikura) gunkan wrapped in salmon seemed like it was off to a good start, however with the entire morsel in my mouth it became clear that it was far too salty – probably from the ikura marinade/preservation fluids.
I had high hopes for the uni gunkan (sea urchin), but it just didn’t taste good. It was bitter rather than sweet, and had a strange and unpleasant taste that seems to be the difference between the good quality stuff and the cheap stuff.
The maguro tuna nigri was more bitter than sweet, a problem that I had with a lot of the a la carte nigiri at Sushi Train Maroubra. The serving size of tuna was large and generous, however the quality wasn’t good. Having straight fish on rice really accentuated the low quality of the rice – and the huge quantity. The rice was dry, almost stale tasting, and ruined every subsequent plate.
This is the tako (octopus) nigri. The slices of octopus were extremely difficult to chew, and it did not seem like much consideration was taken in the preparation of the octopus to provide a morsel that was actually edible. After chewing on my octopus for at least 90 seconds straight I gave up. This nigiri also fell victim to the awful rice.
The engawa nigiri was fatty and good, however again let down by the rice.
Ultimately we had a very bad meal at Sushi Train Maroubra – so bad in fact that it helped us to limit our ordering. We would normally spend more as a couple at a place like Sushi Rio or Sushi Hotaru, as the food in these places is much better. A special call out needs to be made for the awful quality rice which left its stain on every morsel it touched, especially in the volume in which it was used.
My partner and I recently became engaged, and Restaurant Hubert, with its 15% public holiday surcharge, was where we chose to eat afterwards. Prices as mentioned in this post are as-paid inclusive of this surcharge, but even without this surcharge it looks from other places on the internet that prices at Hubert have risen a healthy 30% over the last few years.
I’ve been trying to stay away from alcohol recently, but from the single sip that I had I can confirm that this Campari Grapefruit ($17.25) was pretty fresh tasting.
We started our night with roe boats ($17.25 each) – expensive little pastry tarts topped with trout roe, sea urchin, and avruga. I enjoyed the thin, dual layered pastry as well as the oceanic flavours, with the sea urchin being particularly noteworthy with its unusual funky fungi like flavour. It was like tasting three different parts of the sea. Just a shame that it didn’t last.
The Pâté en Croûte ($31.05), a dense buttery but cold pastry baked around a similarly dense pork terrine, was up next. We battled our way through the interesting and varied textures of this dish, with no idea as to which part of the animal any particular mouthful or mouthfeel came from. Ultimately whilst the pastry flavour was just right, we felt that the terrine was too salty, and that while the dill pickle was nice and sour, its use was limited when paired with something that was already so flavourful. This is one dish that we just didn’t finish, and I would recommend avoiding this if you’re only dining as a party of two. There’s more variety to be experienced than to be so invested in the incredibly dense plate.
This Prime Beef Tartare ($33.35), made from wagyu topside, was just so fresh. The seasonings, including the included capers and pickles, reminded me of a raw cheeseburger, but not in a bad way. The mini French fries, fun as they were, made the dish a little bit difficult to eat, and furthered this cheeseburger (or should I say royale with cheese) motif. Though some past online reviewers have heaped criticism on this tartare, either it’s improved greatly in the intervening time or I just don’t have as refined a palate. Either way, it’s a recommendation from me.
My partner is known to enjoy a good potato, and though I wasn’t nuts for the Pommes Anna ($18.40), she loved it. These potato towers, cut with slices through them to maximise exposure to oil in the deep frying process, were cooked deliciously crispy on the outside with an appropriate remnant of moisture and softness on the inside. They came bathed in a beurre blanc sauce, and honestly what non cardiovascular related wrong has ever come from the combination of potato and butter?
This was my first time eating snail, and though I had some mild initial apprehension towards Hubert’s Escargot XO ($33.50) they turned out to be a reasonably soft introduction. The snails were a bit smaller, shrivelled up and tougher than I had imagined, with not a lot of inherent flavour, rather taking on the rather pleasant (though not very spicy at all) XO sauce. The XO sauce was particularly good with the bread.
The baugette and butter came with our order of escargot, but can also be purchased separately for $8. It may be that this was the first time that I had had bread in some time, but I absolutely loved it. It was just so good. The crust to middle-bread ratio was optimal due to its size. The bread was dense near its crust but also inside. The butter was salty, dense, heavy, and just right. We both enjoyed eating the bread with the sauce from the pommes anna as well as the escargot’s XO sauce.
The Mille-Feuille ($32.20) was alright, but represented pretty poor value considering it was essentially the same price as the tartare or escargot and was a mere dessert.
OVERALL THOUGHTS We had been meaning to eat at Hubert for some time, and our dinner did not disappoint. I did feel that overall the food was a little bit too salty for my taste (except for the bread), though this was more a problem for our waiter who had to be constantly back and forth with the water. Though some have complained, we had no problem with the 90 minute seating, as we were hungry enough to scoff down all of our dishes within the prescribed time limit. The presence of live jazzy music was definitely a point of difference, though I think the very fact that such a large and grand subterranean space could exist at all in the Sydney CBD, in a state of constant night, and with a single door as a point of ingress and egress is perhaps the most interesting part.
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
We ate at Sanpo in Rosebery in June 2020, at the height of the first wave of COVID-19 in Sydney.
We appreciated the strict hand hygiene and social distancing procedures, and understood that we had to wait outside for our table to free up. Safety was more important than comfort.
The beef sukiyaki hotpot was delicious.
The uni sashimi was some of the best sea urchin I’ve had in a while. Large, plump pieces.
The sashimi and sushi set was delicious.
The aburi scallop nigiri was also delicious, however as there was already some that came with the sushi and sashimi set we need not have ordered.
Overall I loved the dimly lit and quiet romantic vibe of the restaurant. I can recommend Sanpo as a nice date location to take your special person or feline (confirm with the restaurant ahead of time).
I’ve been wanting to try Monkey’s Corner for a long time, but it’s been difficult to get our work schedules to sync up with its limited Thurs-Sun 5PM-9PM opening hours. This afternoon I finally got the call – to come try out Monkey’s Corner to see if it’s good before bringing the wider group.
Monkey’s Corner, located next to its sister restaurant KOI, is a Japanese-influenced eatery run by the Poernomo brothers. Its menu consists of doburi, noodles, and other japanese inspired dishes, and patrons are free to order desserts and coffee from KOI next door.
I had the Uni egg noodle with dashi cream, sea urchin, salmon roe ($27). The first thing to mention is that the portion was absolutely tiny. The photos on instagram and even the photo that I’ve taken don’t do justice to the miniscule size of the portion. Perhaps the best measure of the size is the spoon in the background of the image. This dish was about three spoons long and one and a half spoons wide.
What I think was most disappointing was that this dish was clearly pasta, rather than noodles. Noodles in an Asian context does not describe super-al-dente noodles in a heavy cabonara-like sauce. That’s what this was, and it caught me off guard. Pasta was not what I was expecting, and pasta was not what I wanted. The portions of uni seem large in this photo, but were actually very small in person. I had high hopes for this dish, but it was not meant to be.
I really wanted to enjoy Monkey’s Corner, but it was not meant to be. I would not bring a friend or colleague.
