Japanese

212 Minoya – I blame the tree

January 30, 2016 by Andrew Christie 4 Comments

minoya1 — The Friday-night thousand-yard stare. The woman needs a beer.

On the Friday night of a strange, disjointed week, the weather was having its usual effect on Sydney’s transport. A couple of thunderstorms in the middle of the day meant that the trains would be stuffed until the following day, so Strop and I were going to be a bit late rather than the half an hour early that I had anticipated. No quiet beer beforehand this week.

The target for tonight, the first actual, on-Enmore-Road eatery of the Encore, was a Japanese restaurant. We had thought it was called Oganoya, but it seems to have mysteriously changed his name to Minoya, according the the sign outside. Luckily, it was still Japanese, so the bottle of Reisling I had bought at the bottle shop, wouldn’t go to waste.

Strop and I arrived within minutes of each other but there was no sign yet of Marie. Strop had warned her that we were running late, so she had no doubt adjusted her own travel plans. The room at Minoya is large and sparsely decorated. The main feature is a large and luridly autumnal, plastic Japanese Maple tree in the middle of the room. Like some sort of bento-based fairy tale, the room is frozen between summer and winter. We were directed to a table tucked behind the tree which I suspect may have contributed to some of the erratic service that followed.

Both Strop and I had been subjected to “interesting” work weeks, but now it was the weekend. We opted to save the wine for the moment and have a quick beer before Marie arrived. Strop decided she wanted an Asahi, so I took the other option and went Sapporo. Suffice it to say, I won the beer wars.

Marie arrived soon after we had determined which was the superior beer, and by inference the superior judge of a good ale. It turned out that Marie had been sitting in a bar on Enmore Road, having a pre-dinner drink of her own, and had seen both Strop and I hustling up the road, thinking we were late. Which we were, but as it turned out we needn’t have rushed. Marie had no sooner plonked herself down at the table, than her phone started ringing. She is a popular woman, obviously in demand, even by Strop’s standards.

When the phone calls had been dealt with, the conversation somehow flipped over to Marie’s arrival in Oz 37 years ago (she is originally a French-Canadian), and how she was disappointed when she arrived that no one spoke French. It does make you wonder about who teaches geography in Canadian schools though. As a 24-year-old world traveller, she ended up in Singapore with no money and no visa, so she did what all good travellers do. She married the first Australian she met. It seems to have worked out well for her though, she and her first husband are still good friends. Of course while Strop and I were taking all this in, we had been neglecting the menu. The waiter kept coming back, asking if we were ready to order yet. It was only when we decided to pay attention that we realised that they had only given us one menu. I thought maybe there was a global shortage of menus, but all the other tables seem to have plenty, so I think the maple tree is to blame. When we pointed this out to the waiter, he was very apologetic, but we still had to wait until he had seated a new table and taken their drink orders before we got any more menus.

When we finally made some decisions, we ordered prawn gyoza, grilled eggplant and chicken karaage, to start and for mains, a sashimi platter and sizzling pork. While we waited for the food I grilled Marie about her Air BnB experiences. This was by way of research, my new book has a character who hosts an Air BnB, funnily enough, in a quite similar situation to Marie. This discussion soon veered away from the amount of time that tourists spend in showers, and skipped lightly over vanity-publisher rip-offs, our first Japanese restaurant experience (the Fuji Tempura Bar, of revered memory), travel reminiscences, children’s relationships, tertiary education, and the important question of which is more important in a friendship, loyalty or honesty.

Luckily the food turned out to be better than the service. The gyoza were plump and tasty, the eggplant meltingly delicious, and the chicken sweet and crunchy. The sashimi platter was generous and all the fish very fresh. It even came with a side salad that featured a wedge of orange. Always a welcome bonus. The sizzling pork came with lots of veggies and a sweet soy sauce. It was excellent too.

By this time, the first bottle of wine had disappeared. We asked the waiter for a bottle of sauv blanc from the menu. He was very apologetic again, explaining that his staff had only put one bottle of each white in the fridge that afternoon, so basically we could have a warm sauv blanc, or a cold Chardonnay. We went with the Chardy, even though this goes against Strop’s religion, she had drunk enough by this time to be agnostic on the issue.

The disappearance of the second bottle of wine coincided neatly with the disappearance of the last of the food. We took this as a sign and made our way out onto the street, where we battled our way through hordes of scantily clad and sweaty youngsters outside the Enmore Theatre, and paused for a quick dance to a 70s revival band, playing up a storm outside the Hub. A great way to finish our first Enmore Road outing.

467 Ichioku Teppanyaki – No egg on my face but plenty on my shirt

January 10, 2015 by Andrew Christie Leave a Comment

Happy New Year!

It’s a steamy Friday night and we are back in the questing saddle, trotting gently down the hill towards St Peters. There was a shower earlier in the evening that failed to do anything about the temperature or the humidity, but it’s good to kick off the weekend with a beer and a meal with friends. Tonight it’s Ichioku Teppanyaki, which I am looking forward to with a kind of hopeful trepidation, the way you do when you know things are going to be messy and embarrassing – but hopefully fun as well. We have teppanyaked before, but it was a long time ago when the Stropette and the Stropolina were youngsters, and I seem to remember it may have involved a birthday celebration and a bunch of young girls who mostly weren’t ours. In my blurred memory it is a piece of theatre with plenty of flying food, squealing children, and bemused parents, in which the actual eating plays only a very minor role.

We have company tonight in the form of great friends Anna and Wendy, and our mature and sophisticated party is a far cry from the squealing children. A point that is brought home to us by the chef/performer who asks if we want to “play or eat.” To Anna and Wendy’s horror, Strop and I immediately say “Play!” No one can say we didn’t ask for it.

Ichioku is a fairly unprepossessing place. There is a big room with a two central barbecues, and seats around the edge. It has bright fluorescent lighting which made it easy to see that Strop was the only one there when I arrived a few minutes late, having polished off a therapeutic schooner up the road at the Social Club. It is a bit hot and stuffy inside with the barbecue so close, but once the action starts we don’t really notice. The menu includes a variety of banquets and set menus as well as a short a la carte section. We opt for one of the banquets, mainly because it means we don’t have to make any decisions, and anyway food isn’t really the main game here. The banquet comes with entrees and dessert, which we are going to need. Strop had been hoping to have cocktails for dessert, up the road at Earl’s Juke Joint, but this promising plan proves to be both brilliant and completely impractical because Anna and Wendy are both driving.

467-4 — Someone else getting the flame treatment

The four of us get on with compulsory Christmas catch-up chatter while the food starts to arrive. First up are an unremarkable salad and a very nice bowl of miso soup, which proves to be surprisingly refreshing given the heat. Next up are little spring rolls and crisped-up gyoza which disappear rapidly as the conversation moves on to the staple subject of people of our age: who has been diagnosed with what. Our displays of medical terminology are happily interrupted by the arrival of the main event in the form of a man who had been a waiter earlier when we arrived, but was now a black-clad barbecue ninja, armed with a glistening pair of razor sharp paint-scrapers, and a dishcloth. There is a lot of clanging of the paint-scrapers, and the odd, slightly terrifying ball of flames, as he prepares the cooking surface. Chicken breasts and prawns are cooked quickly and skilfully, the cleaning and preparation of the prawns in particular, is a master-class in paint-scraper prowess. Happily, this protein-rich part of the meal is delivered to our plates in a conventional manner. Next up is the beef, which is a tasty but relatively uneventful precursor to the (… drum-roll) eggs. This is where our host puts the P in play and the Fs in flying-food. There is a demonstration of egg balancing, an opportunity to catch raw eggs in bowls – or on your shirt if you prefer. Then there is the ever-popular omelette-machine-gun event, complete with reverse fire to surprise the unwary audience. At some stage during this all-action section there was a bit of fried rice cooking too. The uneventful dessert (ice-cream with raspberry topping) was a welcome relief.

Ichioku doesn’t seem to be thriving. There weren’t many punters for a Friday night, just two other groups beside ours. I suspect that the market for flying food circus is either limited or cyclical. I don’t think people are lining up to get egg all over themselves more than once. If you do feel like a bit of play with food, it is worth noting that Ichioku is BYO and the nearest bottle shop is a fair hike in either direction, so it’s best to stock up on the way to the restaurant.

Next up is an apparently un-named café.

I'm off home to wash the egg out of my shirt — I’m off home to wash the egg out of my shirt

381 Japone Sushi – A Star Trek cliche is fulfilled

July 26, 2014 by Andrew Christie 2 Comments

A planning session with sushi, that was the idea. We are going to the UK on holidays later in the year, and our dear friend Anna will be joining us for part of the time. As the margins for procrastination are rapidly dwindling, decisions need to be made. Who will be where, when. Enough vaguery, enough shilly-shallying. It’s time to nail this shit down. So a nice meal, some wine and some decisions, that was the plan.

We were all in a good mood, having met up at Cafe Newtown first and watched the friday night crowds arriving to be greeted by the cute looking police drug dog and about a dozen boys and girls in blue. I ducked across the road to the bottle shop to buy a bottle of Pinot Gris with a pretty drawing of a bird on the label, and then joined Strop and Anna at a shop selling polka-dotted felt hats for $19.95. “Bargain!” said Strop, reaching for my wallet.

When we got to Japone Sushi we opted for the train rather than one of the side tables. This was going to mean that there was less room for Strop’s hand-drawn calendar / spreadsheet but who can go past the option of having their food arrive on a miniature luggage carousel, especially when you are planning a holiday. It’s imperative.

So we hung our bags and coats on the backs of our stools and perched ourselves in a row and waited for the tiny trains to pull in. The first to arrive were a series of little wooden boxes with shot glasses. Oyster shooters! MMMmmmm. They were good. Look mussels. Yes! Mussels, yum. What’s next? Try this. What is it? Do you want some or not? Sure. MMMmmmm. That was good, what was it? Ceviche! In a little hipster jar! Quick grab them. Get a photo. Stop shouting. MMMmmmm. What’s that with the salmon? Watermelon. It’s got watermelon in it too. Crunchy. And smooth. Wow.

There is a slightly crazed mood that overtakes you at the start of a sushi train session. It happens with yum cha too, all the food coming past, all looking so good. Decisions need to be made quickly. This mild form of hysteria was exacerbated at Japone Sushi because there is so much fantastic looking feature food. At the bottom of their business card it says “It’s sushi… But not as you know it!” And for once that cliche is appropriate. This is sushi with a sense of fun and experimentation, and a fair bit of chilli: Spider King Roll; Volcano; Kiss of Fire; Popcorn Shrimp; Sashimi Tacos. The food was excellent, and fun. And excellent. The Pinot Gris from Orange was pretty good to.

Once we had got over our initial feeding frenzy and got to the point where our stomachs started to tell us that at some stage it is going to shut its doors and we had better start taking our time and choosing wisely, we started to talk about the holidays. The primary reason for the trip is to go to the wedding of an old but young friend at a church in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Anna is a librarian, specialising in built heritage, and she had been doing her research. “Is it the church with the tall steeple or the one with the short round tower?” Tall steeple. “When the invitation says we’ll be there with bells on – how is that? The book said the churches had no bells because the designers didn’t want to disturb the peace of the residents.” Turn of phrase. “Will we be able to spend a night at a London pub?” And a Devon pub. More than one probably. Ooh look, Kingfish Jaws, do you want one of those?

There was reminiscing about forgotten passports and East Finchley station, number 13 buses, and a fair bit of excitement. Where shall we go? Kew? Of course. The museums? There are quite a few. Galleries? Tate? Modern? No the old one. British Museum. Nice roof. Derek Jarman’s garden. Sissinghurst. Not that fussed about Bath. But it is lovely. Or Stonehenge. Highgate Cemetery? Oh yes, let’s do the tour.

As we left Anna said “I can’t remember if I’m leaving on the 8^th or the 9^th. It’s one of them, but I’m not sure if I’m mixing it up with the 19^th which is when I leave Rome. I think.” It was a planning session short on details but long on excitement.

Next up is a rock’n’roll hamburger joint. That should be fun.

258 Iktus Sushi House – The King Street floorshow – always reliable

January 18, 2014 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

Having stumbled out of Black Sheep, we stepped next door, straight into Iktus Sushi House for a real meal. This place treads a fine line between take-away and restaurant, but as Strop points out, it has proper tables set for eating, and walls covered with photographs of all the food you can order, so we can’t ignore it. We continue with the evening’s theme by ignoring the Nominatively Determined Ordering rule. No sushi for us tonight, instead we order edamame, gyoza two ways (green/steamed and prawn/fried), seafood yakisoba and unadon.

Our table is tiny and so close to the front that passers-by have to step around us. This is where we like to sit when it is just the two of us. The passing parade gives us something to talk about and papers-over any awkward silences. After a short disagreement about who ignored the other and reached for their smartphone first, the food started to arrive. As the plates kept coming our table real estate values sky-rocketed and we eventually had to put the phones away. The food was bought by a taciturn Japanese man in a bright turquoise Hawaiian shirt and a straw hat. Very up beat.

The green gyoza was nice and so were the prawn ones, even though they were deep-fried, rather than pan-fried. We managed to burn our mouths on both types, the liquids inside resembling molten lava as we bit into them. The unadon wasn’t bad (Strop likes a nice bit of eel), but the seafood yakisoba was disappointing. Greasy and over-seasoned. We have a bottle of ginger beer each to accompany our meal.

What with the ginger beer, Hawaiian shirt, and unremarkable food, it is all bit as if we are still on holidays, except for the floorshow. King Street is always entertaining, and tonight it has laid on the disparate group of bikers who congregate each week at Gelatomassi (two doors down). The first to arrive tonight is a leather clad road warrior on a huge Japanese sports bikes, who turns out, when the helmet is removed, to be a young moslem woman – complete with head scarf! Take a bow multiculturalism. Next is a big bloke on an electric-blue chopper with a Greek-Cypriot theme going on (very classical). Then three little guys on a variety of big loud bikes show up and try and man-handle their mounts into the limited number of spaces available. There is a lot of discussion about who should park where, and eventually the last two to arrive are sent into purgatory across the road. They are not happy about it either. They obviously want their bikes close by, so they can keep an eye on them while they sit on the street and lick their rum’n’raisin cones.

With all this excellent distraction going on, we accidentally eat all of the food that has been put in front of us. Oh well, it’s all in the cause of research after all. While Strop is buying a gelato for dessert, a car pulls out of a parking spot right in front of Gelatomassi. It is as if someone has fired the starting gun at Le Mans. Bikers abandon their gelatos and short-blacks, and rush to bikes scattered on both sides of the street, starting them and riding back to the poll position parking place that is being guarded by the big Cypriot guy.

It must be nice to have a passion in life, I think as Strop offers me a lick of her peanut butter gelato.

191 – Moshi Moshi Gyoza – Fun food that hits more than it misses

September 21, 2013 by Andrew Christie 1 Comment

It’s a memorable name, but is it trying too hard to be cute? I was a bit dubious at first, but now I’m a convert. This place is full of cheerfulness and amusing eating. Just what we needed after a week of bad-news on the parental front.

“Let’s order first then talk,” said Strop un-bagging a bottle of WA riesling. I had spent the day filling in forms, and talking to aged-care and medical types, so alcohol and the promise of food was definitely called for before I started the latest Dad download.

We ordered a mixed bag of gyoza from the specials menu, to start, and teppan salmon, ramen with chicken and some edamame. The wait staff are all got-up in brightly coloured Japanese costumes, and they add to the general air of cheerfulness by greeting each new arrival with cries of “Moshi moshi.” And it’s not just the floor staff, the kitchen staff get in on the act too, in a kind of call-and-reply routine, shouting out more greetings from the back of the restaurant in response to the front of house greetings. Our waitress is the only anglo on the staff and seems a little bit nervous and tentative as she takes our order. I presume she must be new, learning the ropes etc. Poor girl, all those strange new Japanese foods to learn… until she shatters my presumptions by bellowing our order out to the kitchen in gutteral and nasal Japanese. Strop reckons the only thing she was nervous about was whether or not to correct our awful attempts at Japanese pronunciation.

Our table is near the front so we have a good view of the passing parade on the footpath. I point out a large group of gorgeous young things in short skirts and tall heels tottering past, no doubt on their way to happy hour at Kuleto’s. “Write that down,” says Strop pointing at my closed notebook. So I do as I’m told.

The edamame arrives first and keeps the alcohol company as I update Strop. Then the rest of the food arrives very quickly, so we stop talking and get stuck straight into the task of serious eating. I think I’ve only ever had one type of gyoza before so the mixed gyoza plate is is a whole new experience. Mushroom gyoza? Prawn gyoza with the tail sticking out the top? Who knew? Cheese gyoza? With tomato sauce for dipping? It is all strange and fascinating and somehow very Japanese. It is also extremely yummy. The teppan salmon is fantastic too, tender and tasty. The ramen is disappointing though. It is made with instant noodles which have soaked up most of the stock, and the egg is hard-boiled. But the stock is tasty and the chicken balls are really good. So swings and roundabouts. Strop is reminded of a Japanese film about a ramen restaurant (from the days when we used to go to Japanese films).

“It had a cowboy hat wearing truck driver.”

“Yeah, I remember, and an old guy who was like a ramen whisperer.”

“And that sexy scene with the live prawn flapping around on the girls stomach.”

“Was that the same film?”

“I think so.”

“But what was it called?”

“No idea.”

Excellent Japanese plates and gratuitous use of lens cap

Strop and I are feeling no pain by this stage and opt for the dessert menu. Yes, we are pleased to confirm that they do have dessert gyoza. And how could we not try them out? What kind of woosie correspondents would that make us? Exactly. So we order the apple and cinnamon and the banana and chocolate. And they are excellent. The banana turns out to be a small refined version of that venerable suburban Chinese restaurant standard, the banana fritter. And the apple is a kind of crispy reconstructed apple pie. More yums.

“Tampopo!”

“Bless you.”

“No that’s the film.”

And so it was. I thought the name had something to do with flowers but she’s right. Memory is a funny old thing. Loved that prawn scene.

We cruise past a few bookshops on the stumble home, before self-medicating with chocolate and whisky in front of the telly. Simple Pleasures.

184 – Iiza – What the hell is an izakaya anyway?

September 7, 2013 by Andrew Christie 7 Comments

As is often the case, we start this week’s adventure with a small dispute. What the hell is an izakaya anyway? Japanese tapas says Strop, full of the glib confidence of someone informed by friends. Personally I thought it was something to do with matching food and drink, having once misread a good food guide entry. Turns out that we are both just right enough to save face and to assure ourselves that we were each more right (or less wrong than the other). The great wikipedia reckons that izakaya are basically sake shops that let you sit around and drink on the premises, and they provide a bit of food to soak up the alcohol. Makes sense, the three places I have been to that called themselves izakayas have all been liberally decorated with sake bottles. I suspect that is where the similarity ends though, as most of the emphasis is on the food here.

Iiza has been around for a couple of years now and has always looked a bit exotic from the outside (cool name – izakaya trendyness – scarcity of japanese joints on the King Street – wishful thinking – all of that). Strop and I were looking forward to trying it out. We did have vague plans to include some other participants in the outing, but it’s been a busy time. Strop reckons it felt as if someone had grabbed the back of her belt on Sunday night and given her the bum’s rush through the week. So it’s another Friday night with only ourselves for company.

It could be romantic, date night, even. But we blow our chances at the first hurdle. After both arriving within a few minutes of 7:00, we fail utterly to recognise the presence of each other. We are 2 metres apart, sending txt msgs to each other ARE YOU GETTING CLOSE? – I’M HERE – WHERE IIZA?? COS THAT’S WHERE I AM. “Oh there you are!” we both exclaim, finally having a good look around. After nearly forty years, we are invisible to each other apparently. The staff are bemused, it’s not as if Iiza is a big a place, and it is certainly not packed.

Wine. We need wine. Strop turns down the option of sake in favour of a nice flinty West Australian riesling. And food. We order a couple of specials (raw beef and seared salmon sashimi), gyoza and vegetable sushi rolls. That should get us started. The Iiza decor includes the requisite giant sake bottles, and calligraphy, and it is very brightly lit by large white paper lanterns. A small arrangement of origami at the counter is a nice touch.

Unfortunately the specials turn out to be disappointing, tender but without much flavour. The gyoza are a winner however, and the sushi are good too, despite crumbling under the clumsy onslaught of my chopsticks.

Well, that lot didn’t last long – we are going to need reinforcements. My turn with the menu now: duck teriyaki, (never had that before, and pleasingly, but totally irrelevantly, it is item number 37), and pork belly. The waitress is sorry to inform me that unfortunately some other bastard has eaten the last of the duck teriyaki. I build a bridge and get over my outrage, ordering assorted tempura instead.

The pork belly comes in a broth and is sweet tender and entirely edible. The tempura is crispy on the outside and soft on the inside, with lots of vegies but only 3 prawns.

All in all Iiza is a bit disappointing. Some of it was nice enough but nothing was really outstanding. There are good izakaya joints out there – just not on King Street so far. We went to one in Surry Hills a couple of weeks ago that had loads of sake and japanese beers, as well as flavour packed food (charcoal grilled octopus :-).

We had high hopes for Iiza but we have been reminded once again that this is King Street, and unexpected delights like Thai La-Ong are few and far between.

What’s next? No idea, I’ll just check with Strop.