Teppanyaki Inn, Collins St Melbourne - the oldest teppanyaki restaurant in Australia

I'm an avid lover of 'fun' meals where cooking or serving food involves more active participation from customers (such as hotpot or Korean bbq where it's mostly DIY) or a meal where we get to watch some sort of 'show' in front of us. The latter can be said for teppanyaki restaurants as talented chefs cook up a storm right in front of you. For those of you who don't know what teppanyaki is, teppan is the Japanese word for an iron plate and teppanyaki is naturally the type of cuisine cooked on top of iron plates. Some teppanyaki restaurants actually throw food at you where you're meant to catch it with your bowl, or if more daring, with your mouth. This type of participation can often lead to dirty shirts or burnt lips and is a rare occurrence nowadays.

I recently visited Teppanyaki Inn on Collins St, Melbourne after recommendations from an ex-colleague who is also Japanese. It was a very nice find albeit not being the cheapest meal out there, but we did get a lot of good value ingredients such as good grade beef and scallops. Situated at 182 Collins St, it didn't have much street frontage so it wasn't the easiest place to find. Once inside, I was in awe of the high ceiling and almost warehouse like feeling which is a good design for this type of cuisine (smoke and fumes from the hot plate needs ventilation). The restaurant was quite dark except for the lights on top of each teppan and created a very nice atmosphere. According to their website, Teppanyaki Inn was established in 1975 and was the earliest teppanyaki style eatery in the whole of Australia. That's certainly something to be proud of!

We were served with the usual sauces but this time, a waitress actually poured fresh sauce into the bowls. I liked that extra personal touch compared to the usual pre-poured bowls brought out from the kitchen. A thing to be careful of though, if you don't order a main meal, you will be charged an additional $10 for the sauces.

Waitress pouring sesame sauce

The sauces usually come in soy based and sesame based. You can dip the ingredients in whichever sauce you like, but I find meat goes better in the soy based sauce and seafood is better in the sesame sauce. That's just my preference though.

Dipping sauces - sesame and soy based

In between the sauces was complimentary pickled cucumber and wakame (seaweed) which was very refreshing. It made me salivate and wanting more!

Complimentary pickled cucumber and wakame (seaweed)

We went as a group of 11 and we all ordered the teppanyaki special dinner set for $59pp with the Tasmanian tenderloin beef. It's a common occurrence for teppanyaki chefs to combine two tables worth of food onto the one trolley to save space, since usually two hot plates are right next to each other. This trolley looked like way too much food even for 11 of us.

I was surprised though that two chefs actually came to cook for us because all the other tables only had one chef. I guess we had one of the largest groups that night. They worked very hard, especially the one who's further away in the photo. He was cooking away nonstop for us the whole night.

The first thing to appear on the hot plate was potatoes, although they didn't end up on our plates till a bit later as they took longer to cook. I love potatoes in any shape and form so this was a good start to the meal for me. They had been cooked for long enough to have a slightly crispy outer layer and a gooey soft and very hot middle.

Potatoes

Next up was mushrooms which is another favourite of mine. It's hard to get mushrooms wrong!

Mushrooms

One of the highlights during a teppanyaki meal is watching the chefs cook and cut the prawns. The fast clinking of the knife and spatula make them look so professional.

Prawns

The prawn heads are removed and flattened then cooked until so crunchy you can eat the whole thing, although it might not be the thing for everyone.

Separated prawn head and prawn meat

The scallops also had to be commended. They were juicy and cooked to perfection. I didn't even need to dip it in sauce to enjoy its natural flavours.

Prawns and scallops

A wedge of lemon was provided for the seafood along with a lemon squeezer. I had never seen this in a restaurant before and was a bit intrigued. I wonder where I'd be able to buy one for home.

After the seafood, we were ready for the main star of the night. Beef! The chef was so fast that I couldn't take a photo of the whole beef before he cut it up but when he noticed my frantic look, he was very nice and held the beef in place for me until I was done.

Tasmanian tenderloin beef

I loved the smell and sound of the beef scorching on the hot plate, although by the time we had to eat the beef, I was already getting a little full.

The beef also came with cooked garlic which might not be so good for the breathe but is fantastic together with the beef.

Tenderloin beef with garlic

A teppanyaki meal wouldn't be complete without freshly cooked veggies and nothing can be better than my two favourites - baby spinach and bean shoots. The spinach was as expected, refreshing, healthy and tasty. As we had just eaten a lot of beef, spinach was good to wash it all down and clean my palate.

Baby spinach

The bean shoots were lined up in a long row and divided into small equal portions for each person using a knife.

bean shoots

Maedaya, Richmond - a Japanese Izakaya

Before I went to Japan at the beginning of this year I was for the most part an izakaya newbie. Basically I hadn't really had much experience in drinking beer/sake and enjoying skewers and other nibbles at Japanese styled sake bars. Yuye and I went to a few while we were there and totally loved them. The food were fantastic, the alcohols alluring and atmospheres were exciting. There was a sense of joy and festivity and relaxedness in the air with the constant chattering and glowing red faces around me. Izakayas are places where people go to rest after a long day at work and gossip about new things happening in their lives.

I will be blogging about our experiences at some izakayas in Japan in a later post.

When we came back to Melbourne, we decided to try more izakayas as there are so many around and some are quite popular, one of them being Maedaya in Richmond. Maedaya has a no bookings policy unless if you're booking for a larger group and as the place is quite small, most of the time you will have to fight with the eager crowds lining up at the door. But of course, the smaller the group (we went as just 2 people) the easier it is to get seats.

Maedaya has a nice selection of Japanese sakes, umeshus and other alcohols where the bottles are neatly lined up on the shelf behind the counter.

We were seated at the counter where the skewers were made and the smell was so tantalising. It was 8pm and I was hungry.

Yuye ordered a regular Kirin Draught ($7.50) while I ordered a cooler Choya Blush ($7.50) which was fruity and sweet. Due to the ice and size of the drink, it wasn't as alcoholic which was a good thing for me. You can't go wrong with a pink drink!

The first dish of the night was the Kawari Tuna Sashimi ($12.80). To my surprise, it was actually a very large plate full of fresh and slightly scorched tuna pieces drenched in sesame oil and wasabi mayo and topped with a good amount of grated daikon. A bit too oily for Yuye and myself, but the taste was so good I ate all my share and part of Yuye's anyway. The tuna literally melted in my mouth which the flavours of the sauce and natural sweetness of the fish came flooding onto my tongue. I loved it together with the daikon as it was flavoured with a citrusy sauce (most likely ponzu). It was a most fitting start to the meal.

The next dish, something we order without fail if available on the menu, was the soft-shell crab. It came with 2 crabs which were very crispy and tasty but yet not that oily. Yuye and I chowed down the soft-shell crabs in a matter of seconds.

After the soft-shell crabs came all the skewers. It was a nice experience enjoying our skewers while watching the waiter behind the counter make them. The first skewer that we had was the beef skewer (gyu kushi) for $3.80. It was a tiny bit tough but very tasty. Yuye liked this one.

The next skewer was the chicken skewer or yakitori ($2.50). It was quite average and I noticed why. The chicken skewers were actually pre-cooked, most likely boiled, and then reheated on the grill and then dipped in yakitori sauce. When chicken is pre-cooking and then reheated, it tends to become a bit more dry and bland. Yuye and I both didn't like this one too much.

Three different skewers came on one plate after the chicken and they were (from bottom up) chicken skin (kawa - $2.50), pork belly (buta kushi - $3.80) and chicken & spring onion (negi tori - $2.50). Some people (in fact many girls I know) refuse to eat chicken skin. The notion of ordering a skewer with JUST chicken skin on it might be utterly unthinkable. However, I'm an avid lover of chicken skin and I loved this skewer. It was a bit crunchy and a tiny bit oily but definitely delicious. If you like chicken wings and eat chicken skin, I suggest trying this skewer. The pork belly was not bad although a tiny on the tough side but I liked the chunky salt on it and the chicken with spring onion was quite average as well.

One of my favourite skewers of the night was the next one - pork asparagus ($3.50). It was a slender long asparagus wrapped in a thin layer of pork and grilled. The asparagus was juicy and tender, the pork was salty which gave the whole skewer a balanced flavour.

We contemplated whether we wanted to order more dishes since we were mostly satisfied but could fit in a few more things. It was a bad decision really. We ended up ordering 2 more fried dishes, the first one being agedashi tofu. It was a bit different to the usual way of making it. Maedaya's version was very saucy and was topped with vegetables instead of grated daikon. I liked the sauce because it was sour and flavourful, but it was something that Yuye can make at home. The tofu batter was not that crunchy, partly due to them being soaked in the sauce. The major thing that I noticed with this dish though was the badly cut veggies. The carrot pieces were unevenly cut with some large and some small. If this happened on Masterchef as part of a challenge, it would not have fared too well for the contestant. Overall it was still a tasty dish but it didn't wow me.

The second fried dish we ordered was the veggie tempura. This was an even bigger mistake. I should have noticed the couple next to us ordering the same dish and stopped at that but I was too slow. As you can probably tell, the batter on the tempura was thick, oily and not at all good. It was like the batter on fish and chips. The batter should have been airy and light, a very important element in making good tempura. We ended up taking the whole outer layer off the bigger pieces and just ate the inside. They also didn't serve the tempura with a dipping sauce which may have helped ease the oiliness a bit in my opinion.

Although the last two dishes didn't leave such a good impression, we were still keen on trying a dessert. A separate dessert menu was provided and we chose the Matcha Warabimochi ($5.50) which is a chilled green tea mochi dish. It was very chilled indeed and was quite a nice end to the meal. The dessert came with honey to dip the mochi as by itself there would have not been any sweetness at all. Although I enjoyed this dessert, I did think it needed a bit more green tea flavour or a bit more bitterness since the honey really overpowers whatever flavour was in the mochi.

Maguro Japanese Restaurant, Chadstone - fantastic tonkotsu ramen!!

One of the few things that can brighten up my day instantly is none other than unexpectedly finding a fantastic restaurant. After brief discussions in the car on the way to a friend's house the other day, Yuye suggested "let's just eat somewhere close and on the way". I was going to pull over at Pancake Parlour that just opened recently right next to Chadstone Shopping Centre but as it was on the wrong side of the road and eating there would mean doing a u-turn amidst a whole lot of traffic on busy Warrigal Rd, I decided against the idea. Right opposite Pancake Parlour was a tiny Japanese cafe called Maguro. I've driven past it many times but the thought never occurred to me that it might make a good meal. I believe they opened their doors in March 2011, a good half a year ago. The outside of the restaurant is not the most eye-catching or attractive so it's no wonder not many people know about the place yet.

The interior is simple but fitting although nothing spectacular. I definitely wasn't expecting such a good meal as I sat down. Our first meal was at lunch time and the first thing that we noticed was the lack of staff. As there weren't many customers, service wasn't all that slow but if it got busy, I'm not sure how well they would cope. It seemed like the chef was also doing waiting at the front of the house and many utensils were left on a trolley by the counter for self service. At that point, I wasn't overly impressed, until the big pot of free genmaicha (Japanese green tea with rice) was brought up to our table and everyone else's tables. Free green tea in a Japanese restaurant has been unheard of for me so this was a nice little surprise.

Now here comes the real surprise. I ordered a tuna/salmon chirashi for $19.50. I was expecting something nice for the price I was paying but I didn't expect it to be so pretty! The dish actually tasted as good as it looked. Fresh, juicy raw fish and a sweet scallop on top of a generous topping of tobiko (flying fish roe) and cooked dried salmon chunks on a bed of sushi rice was enough to make me squirm with joy. I was a happy person. The thing that slightly confused me though was why the wasabi was on the edge of the bowl. As the chef brought it out to me, I was fearful that the wasabi would not make it to the table. I also had to get my own soy sauce tray from the trolley. I was a little disappointed with the quality of the wasabi too as it wasn't very strong.

Salmon & Tuna Chirashi - $19.50

I'm not going to complain though because it was so delicious! Don't let the size of the bowl fool you, it was actually quite substantial. I must confess however that although chirashis should be served with cold sushi rice, after having a similar dish at Sushiten, it has set the benchmark for all chirashis for me. I also started to like warm rice served with my fish for some strange reason. So if I was asked whether I liked Sushiten's chirashi or Maguro's more, I'd say Sushiten wins hands down. Maguro is still fantastic and wins by location as it's close to home.

You'd think that's all the surprises but there's more! Yuye ordered the tonkotsu ramen, or better known as Pork Bone Soup Cha Siew Ramen for $15 on the specials board just next to the entrance of the restaurant. $15 for ramen is a reasonable price, especially for this standard. It beats Momotaro on Bridge Rd and Ramen Ya in the CBD. I do not kid you. This ramen was a LOT better. For those of you who don't know, tonkotsu ramen is made by boiling pork with bones intact for hours and hours until all the collagen from the bones have gone into the soup, making the soup thick, sticky and totally porky. Maguro's version was perfectly thick and salty and the meat was so tender it almost melted in my mouth. It was a fairly big bowl too which made us so full!

Pork Bone Soup Cha Siew Ramen (lunch) - $15

Don't even get me started on the eggs. Most places only give you half an egg but Maguro gives you a whole egg. Just look at how runny the yolk is! That is how eggs should be cooked. I'm an avid lover of runny egg yolks and this was just perfect for me. It takes practice and love to make eggs to this quality and just shows how much effort the chef of this restaurant, Sam Lau, has really put into his dishes.

Heirloom & Pancake Dessert House, Melbourne CBD

I'm usually very kind to restaurants I visit, the word 'dislike' isn't something I'd say easily. However, my visit to Heirloom on Bourke St a few weeks ago resulted in an experience that couldn't be described any other way. Sad, but true.

After receiving recommendations from friends, I was sceptical but keen to try this place out. As the brainchild of two talented chefs (Shigeo Nonaka from Shoya and Kyle Doody who has worked in Jacques Reymond and Gills Diner), one would expect a bit more from what we received.

We were nicely tucked away in a little secluded area in front of the sushi bar where we could enjoy fragrant yakitori being cooked. It definitely wasn't the seating or the atmosphere, I liked those.

It also wasn't the service. The waiter and waitress came around to our table consistently throughout the night, topped up our water and provided entertainment in the form of fresh wasabi grating. That was probably the most enjoyable part of the night for me.

Three free starters were provided for each of us. This included (from left to right) edamame, marinated fish (salmon perhaps) and takowasa (squid marinated in a fragrant strong wasabi sauce). Although the takowasa was a bit too strong for me, in no way did I dislike these cute little starters.

The yakitori was tasty and not too expensive. For $3 each, you get one skewer with 3 pieces of tender chicken and negi in between, grilled on the charcoal grill just next to the sushi bar. So it wasn't the yakitori (by the way, we only had one skewer each).

Yoshie Japanese Restaurant & Xiao Nan Guo Spa, Shanghai

Whenever I visit Shanghai, I always go out with my cousins. They're all around my age and know all about where to go for good food and entertainment. On one of the nights during this visit, we ate at a restaurant called Ji Hui or Yoshie Japanese Restaurant (吉惠) which is a buffet Japanese restaurant. You can order a la carte but each dish is deliberately made very expensive so that you would happily choose the buffet option. This is probably the case at most buffet Japanese restaurants in China. The store is small and requires reservation beforehand and you choose the dishes from a menu and they bring it out from the kitchen like they would a la carte.

My cousin found a discount coupon on Da Zhong Dian Ping website (a website somewhat like Urbanspoon but with coupons and a LOT more restaurants from all around China) which is unfortunately only in Chinese. The coupon was for $120Yuan per person (instead of the usual $128Yuan) and if you go in a group of four or more, they give you a live fish cut into sashimi pieces. Refer below for the cool fish. It was totally still alive when it was sliced and the head and tail twitched every now and then. :S I know it's a bit cruel but trust me, the sashimi was the freshest I've ever had and was oh so delicious. I have no idea what type of fish it is though. I was pretty excited when I filmed the fish moving so didn't check the white balance before I pressed the button and I have no idea how to post edit videos so, sorry about the colour. :(

This dish is marinated squid sashimi (I think it was raw) mixed in a kimchi type paste. Not my favourite of the night since marinated things tend to lack that freshness, especially kimchi paste which is overpowering.

Since this was buffet, we really ordered quite a few dishes - it was for four people and my cousins have big appetites. We ordered two lots of rolled beef with enoki mushrooms, it was nicely marinated with a sweet soy sauce and wasn't overcooked. I had quite a few pieces of this dish which made me a bit full.

Sushi Ten, Melbourne CBD

Sushi Ten has always been one of my favourite Japanese restaurants and budget eateries around Melbourne. I remember back in the university days when I used to travel all the way from Parkville to Sushi Ten (located in Port Phillip Arcade near Flinders St) and line up outside just to satisfy my cravings for their mix don (combination of tuna and salmon with condiments on top of rice). Sushi Ten opens its doors at 12pm and usually there will be a line of people waiting outside. During peak hour (between 12pm and 2pm), free seats are scarce and many a time I've shared tables with strangers. It was already 3pm when I took the photos below so that's why the restaurant was reasonably empty. They only open for lunch (although lunch ends fairly late - around 4-4:30pm I believe) and are not open for dinner or on weekends.

Sushi Ten is a family owned business and the owners/chefs are always behind the kitchen counter working away. The one thing I always wondered about is how the waiters knew who ordered which dish. No name is taken, no table number is given and if you walk around the corner they can't even see where you sit. When the store is completely full (including sharing tables with others), the waiters are still able to walk straight up to me with my delicious mix don without even a slight glance in other patrons' directions. This is even the case when a different waiter brings out my meal to the person who actually took the order. I wonder what their secret is…maybe there's hidden cameras. O_O

The only menu available is what's written on the wall and you pay before you eat when you order your meal at the counter. Tea is free but requires self service - tea cups are on a table by the second door and if the tea is running out in the thermos, you can ask the waiter for a filled one. I guess that's how they cut costs to bring such good value food. :)

I always order the mix don when I'm here, although their other dishes are pretty good too. I find the mix don to be the best value and has just the right combination of ingredients to suit my tastes. It consists of raw tuna, salmon, marinated and cooked salmon, tobiko (flying fish roe, a large amount of it too), cucumber, avocado, nori (Japanese seaweed) and the usual ginger and wasabi. The generous amount of tuna and salmon are unevenly cut into thick and large pieces which I like because it's chewy and well, very satisfying when you can shove big pieces of it into your mouth. The rice is warm and if you eat slowly, the bottom of the fish will get slightly cooked. When I first tried this dish, I thought it was weird to have warm rice and slightly cooked fish because it's not what's done elsewhere. However, after so many meals here, I've really come to like my rice warm. The combination somehow gives it a homey feel. :)

Masuya, Sydney

Masuya, situated in a heritage listed building at 14 O'Connell Street, Sydney. It was in fact, right next to the Radisson Hotel, where we were staying for the duration of our Sydney trip. So Masuya is where we had our first dinner, together with a few friends. Now, there was something I really regretted doing during our meal and that is not ordering the Ootoro sushi (fatty tuna) during the tuna festival that was taking place at the time. The sole reason for this is because my friend didn't eat raw fish (no way right?) and Yuye and I decided that we can come back a few days later to enjoy it. Little did we realise, the tuna festival ended that day. :( Even with this biggest regret ever, our two meals at Masuya were thoroughly enjoyed.

First visit

My friend was late for the meal and since Yuye and I were very hungry, we decided to order a few a la carte sushi for ourselves first. The ones we ordered were (I think) grilled kingfish belly and (possibly) flathead. My memory does not go back far enough and I know nothing about white sea-fish. :S They tasted as expected - fresh, deliciously fishy on top of nicely cooked rice. The rice on sushi is actually very important - each grain of rice has to be distinguishable (so can't be too soft), the right amount of sushi vinegar has to be used and the right proportion of rice to fish is important too.

Even though I said my friend didn't eat raw fish, I couldn't help myself but order the Masuya's Sashimi Boat ($78) anyway :D so Yuye and I ate almost all of it by ourselves. There was a great variety of sashimi on it, including the usual yellow fin tuna, salmon, kingfish, oysters and beef tataki (although this probably doesn't usually feature on sashimi platters), and also the less common scampi, scallops and hokkigai. I may have missed a thing or two on the platter, but the most important thing is, it was a wonderful mixture of fresh seafoods arranged in the most appetising way. The colours were so vibrant to match the lovely taste! :D It was quite a good value platter I thought.

We also ordered, of course, dishes for the not so fortunate - for my friend who didn't eat sashimi. Ok, I admit, I ate and liked these dishes too :P. One of them was the Eel Bo Rolls (unagi/eel) for $17.80. There were quite a few pieces, as you can see, there were 8 altogether, but I really only got to eat…..one. I couldn't complain though since I ate a lot of sashimi :D. They tasted sweet and eel like - as expected. I've never had bad eel and most eel dishes taste similar (since you can buy them in a pack and all), but I'm not sure if Masuya buys or makes their own eel sauce.

We also ordered a spider roll dish for $17.80. This consisted of soft shell crabs with crab sticks, avocado, cucumber and mayonnaise. Again, I only ate…one. I was getting deprived! It's ok, I wasn't left hungry for the night since we had pancakes at Pancakes on the Rocks later :). This dish was similar to Makoto's spider rolls and was crunchy, flavourful and definitely worth getting. I like the long plates the rolls come with :D I think I should get some for my kitchen…