Treating Sydney as a holiday destination is tough. Mainly because it’s expensive, requires a lot of eating, and then blogging about all the pictures I took. The taking pictures part and hanging out around Surry Hills are totally enjoyable though!
My two week stint in Sydney was so packed full of jam that I’ve decided that this little izakaya in Chinatown gets its own little post – which is usually reserved for high profile restaurants or coffee adventures! You lucky little izakaya, you!
I actually had two visits here, mainly because I didn’t realise that they only did yakitori at night, which is what I was primarily after. But since I had already stepped inside intending to eat lunch, I stuck with it. In the first round, I ordered the seaweed salad first up. I’ve had seaweed salad served one of two ways – nice fat kelpy bits with sauce, or the standard thin green addictive stuff. Addictive stuff it was!
According to their menu, their sashimi plate didn’t include kingfish, so I ordered a set of kingfish separately. It was a little fishy, but still enjoyable.
Alas, I should have asked and double checked if there was kingfish on the sashimi plate, because here it is! Oops, too much kingfish. They were able to do this as there were only two pieces of scallop instead of the three listed on the menu, I guess. The sashimi was so-so, nothing too impressive or mind blowing.
It wasn’t until my night visit that things got exciting. I gave their scallop nigiri a go, but it didn’t have the same sweetness as those from Sokyo (or even Umi Kaiten Zushi). However, I was curious about a dish on the menu called takowasa. It was described as “raw octopus and wasabi” so I simply assumed it was octopus legs sliced as thin discs, accompanied with wasabi. Though I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t fall under sashimi.
What I received was a surprise to me as a result. It was an ugly, mushy looking mess of things in a small bowl, of slightly slimy baby octopus tentacles in a thin green sauce. However, since I did order it, I gave it a go. Woaaah! It was a salty, spicy, crunchy flavour bomb of amazing! I actually really enjoyed it as it had so much flavour and texture, so much so that I was craving it the next day. Now I’ll have to seek this dish out and try it everywhere!
Ok, now to the actual reason I wanted to visit this place so badly: the yakitori. The several offal options are what intially caught my interest, though I’m still too chicken to order hearts (pun intended). I went for the bonjiri (parson’s nose/chicken tail), pictured, nankotsu (cartilage), reba (liver), sunagimo (gizzard/giblet) and okra maki skewers. Yep, I figured okra would be the most interesting vegetable I could get on a skewer from the menu.
And then out they came, all on their own plate! I thought that was a little weird and excessive, since a few of these could be placed together. The liver must have been cooked medium or less, as it was still bleeding, but could probably have been placed with the giblets, cartilage and okra on the same plate. The only exception was the bonjiri, which had its own plate for not just the oil, but for a soy flavoured sauce that it was cooked with, which made it different from the other skewers. I really liked the liver here, so I guess after Cape Town I actually do like liver overall! The giblets were the best seasoned, with plenty of salt and pepper on them which is great as that’s my favourite bit of chicken offal. The cartilage was the least flavoured, but I love the crunchiness of it so much that I didn’t care too much. The okra was pretty good, and I believe it was possibly topped with cheese, as well as having a mayonnaise dipping sauce.
The owner was also super nice and a very enthusiastic fellow. He initally commented on me taking photos of my food, then came around to ask me how my food was. It was great! It was my first real yakitori experience and I really liked it! Since only really loving and seeking nose to tail and offal after my stint in South Africa, and haven’t having actually made the effort to go to all the izakayas in Surry Hills, this first impression was really good. I wish I had also ordered the tamagoyaki, but at the time I didn’t want to eat more than I already had, since it was an early dinner for me.
Times like this I wished I could revisit at a whim, but alas, I’m in a different state!
Since I have nothing to compare this visit to, I cannot say if the yakitori here is actually decent, but who cares, because I got my first taste of takowasa here, which was so amazing, and the experience was really good – which means I’m happy to come back here to get my yakitori fix!
To Chaco Bar and Izakaya Fujiyamaaaaaa!