Wow, has it been forever since I posted about a restaurant! In this Sydney trip, I wanted to do a mix of new and old. Technically, this is both, since I’ve been to the old Chaco Bar, but not this new one in this new location! It was interesting to see what was the same and what was different!
These dried fish bones were pretty awesome, I wonder if they’re going to be used for stock. They look so cool just hanging there!
The grill’s nice and hot! I took a few different photos of this but I couldn’t get the framing or focus right once the fire started up, so this one is the nicest shot of the lot.
Some wilty but pretty flowers as decor too! It’s same same but different from what is now Chaco Ramen, but what’s interesting is that all the yakitori boards got moved here, even though they’re no longer as yakitori as they used to be? There’s also a dyson on the table, and it has a digital air quality display. It was all green until the flames started up on the grill, then the numbers went sky high!
First things first – pickles! I love pickled vegetables, though this didn’t quite taste like I expected, because I had made an assumption that these would taste like a Japanese sweet vinegar pickle. They were instead quite different, but still yummy!
Gotta get my fill of oysters while I’m on holiday!
Ok, stuff off the grill time! King browns with sharp comte goodness and cured yolk! I love barbequed mushrooms!
Chicken wing prawn toast. Not quite the flavour I was expecting; I was hoping it was exactly as described, that it would taste like prawn toast inside a chicken wing, however, it was more gingery and not quite as prawny as I wanted it to be.
And the yakitori – this one was the chicken thigh, and it was great! This was just like the Chaco Bar stuff I had in my previous visit, super delicious!
Chicken skin too, which were very flavoursome!
Lastly, some pork belly. It was interesting to compare what my brother and I liked, my favourite was the thigh, and his favourite was the skin. We liked the stick we took first, which was interesting, because I didn’t think that time or order would normally affect the taste that much. It could be that we simply liked different things! Definitely a possibility!
Now this was the dish that I was anticipating the most. Horumon yaki – chicken hearts, giblets, cartilage, coriander. I was sad that they took the offal off the yakitori menu, so I wanted the dish that still contained the most delicious bits of a chicken. The flavour was totally not what I was expecting at all! It was a spice mix that I would generally associate with… my random cooking than a Japanese style. It was still very tasty, all the bits were cooked so nicely!
This was probably my favourite dish of the night. Yeah, the yakitori was just as good as I remember, but this special – a 4 week aged rump cap, was amazing! I wasn’t expecting to eat a steak at a yakitori joint, and I don’t usually get rump cap as a cut, so I didn’t really have any expectations for it. But wow, WOW, I love steak from non steak houses, cause they’re done so much better (controversial I’m sure)! This had so much flavour and was so tender, and cooked to a lovely rare to medium rare ish. I absolutely loved it!
And finally we tried the daifuku for dessert. Mine was the yuzu coconut one, and it was quite nice! The mochi skin was great! The only reason I’d pick the Sokyo mochi ice cream over this one is because Sokyo’s ice cream is softer; it’s at just the right melty point for consumption, whereas this one was very much a “just out of the freezer” feeling.
What was interesting about this visit was that there was a couple sitting next to us on the communal table, and it seemed like their first time there. They started talking to us about the place, and it was interesting to hear that it wasn’t quite as amazing as they expected. I can’t remember exactly what they ate, given the menu’s range and smaller yakitori choices, they probably had a mix like we did. Not all of their non-yakitori were quite up there in terms of what I like for flavour, so I can see where the couple were coming from. That being said, I do hope they were in fact very pleased with some of the dishes, because there’s some very good food here!
Overall, I think I can’t compare this Chaco Bar to the old one; this is its own new self with a balance of all kinds of dishes. I do really miss the sansho tuna salad that I had last time, and the offal yakitori, but the yakitori still remains one of the best, for which I’m glad! And now I know they make awesome steak specials too!