Archive
Sydney: Yoshii (Aug. 2013)
Chef: Yoshii Ryuichi
Website: http://www.yoshii.com.au/main.html
Date: August 14, 2013
I haven’t posted at all on this blog for months, and I apologize for that. I’ve been traveling a lot, and I just got lazy. I’m going to try to update a liiiiiiiiiiittle more often now!
For most of August, I traveled around New Zealand and Australia. I went to Auckland, Wellington, Sydney, and Melbourne, and it was pretty awesome to be able to check out those cities. I already did a post on Sidart (Auckland), and I’ll be doing Yoshii, a pretty high-end Japanese restaurant in Sydney, here.
I found out about the restaurant by googling around to see what the top Japanese restaurants in Sydney were. Both Tetsuya’s and Yoshii’s came up the most frequently, but Tetsuya’s was booked for quite a while. I called and made a short-notice reservation, and next thing I knew I was at the restaurant! The restaurant was actually fairly empty. Maybe this was because it was a Wednesday evening. Still… I’m not sure how they’re making money; I only saw about four or five other customers while I was there.
I ordered a set menu that consisted of appetizers, sashimi, a few mains, sushi, and dessert! I asked for no dessert, though; I was way over my caloric budget for the day. I had to cut my losses somewhere…
NYC: New York Sushi Ko (June 2013)
Authors: Victor and Ken
Restaurant: New York Sushi Ko
Chef: John Daley
Website: http://newyorksushiko.com/
Date: June 12, 2013
Dinner
Notes:
New York Sushi Ko just opened on Tuesday, June 11, 2013, and it consists of a sushi bar that can seat seven and a small table that can seat four. You make reservations by calling or texting the number listed. They have pretty late hours, and Chef Daley mentioned that he made the hours so late because he likes serving other people who also work in the restaurant industry. (I don’t know how truthful he was being when he said this, though!)
There are four main menu options: 3 courses, 5 courses, 7 courses, and an open-ended omakase (it generally comprises 9 to 12 courses). We went with the open-ended option, as we wanted to try as much of Daley’s food as possible.
The restaurant’s only two days old, so they’re still working out kinks. I liked what I saw, though! The staff was really friendly and unpretentious, and the atmosphere felt fun and exciting—the staff seemed to enjoy what they were doing, and the customers enjoyed the food. Chef Daley’s loud, relatively wild (at least for a chef), and fun to be around; he definitely made the meal both more lively and relaxing.
The major problem is that Chef Daley is pretty much the only guy preparing the dishes during service… and he has to prepare dishes for up to 11 people. Meals took longer than necessary for some people, but Chef Daley acknowledged this and thanked customers for their patience. We got lucky because we were seated at 9:15 p.m.—by 10:30 p.m., most of the customers had cleared out, so we received our food at an accelerated (or what should be normal?) pace.
Thoughts on the sushi:
The fish was very fresh, and most of it was flown in from Japan. A few things were from other countries; for instance, some of the uni was from Chile and California, and some of the Bluefin tuna was from Spain.
The sushi rice could have been slightly warmer and softer; the rice felt too hard/grainy at times. I wonder if it was because we were eating sushi so late—it was around 11:00 p.m. when we started eating sushi! Still, for a restaurant that was only in its second day of service, the rice was pretty solid.
In the end, I had an enjoyable meal with Chef Daley and the rest of the staff and customers, and there were truly some outstanding dishes and sushi pieces. I can’t say that the meal was perfect because I thought the sushi rice was slightly off. I’ll definitely come back in the future, though, to try new dishes and have more of the sushi! (The place is definitely worth checking out, and it’s still very new—you should go while reservations are relatively easy to make!)
LA Kaiseki/Sushi: Yamakase (Apr. 2013)
Author: Victor
Restaurant: Yamakase
Chef: Kiyoshiro Yamamoto
Website: http://www.yamakase.com/
Date: April 19, 2013
Dinner #2
Notes:
(Whew, Dinner #2. I just had 38 pieces of sushi at Sushi Zo at 5:30 p.m., and here I am at Yamakase to eat a lot more food at 7:30 p.m. I’m going to gain a looooooooooooot of weight today.)
Yamakase recently opened, and they call it an “invite-only” restaurant. It’s not hard to get “invited”, though. You just fill out a form online on their website, and they’ll reply back with an “invitation” soon enough.
The restaurant’s pretty hard to find, and parking was annoying. It’s street parking–only, but, if you’re like me, you’ll just park in a nearby lot and hope that your car doesn’t get towed away. Once we arrived at the restaurant, we had to knock. There’s no sign, and it even says “closed”. They even lock the door hahaha—it was pretty shady.
The meal was wonderful. Chef Yamamoto seemed a bit strict at first, but you realize a few minutes in that he’s a really, really nice guy. He’ll also like you more if you’re really enthusiastic about the food. (He seemed a little offended when one of the customers near us wouldn’t eat the rice when he was serving nigiri.) It was one of those meals that reminded me of Urasawa—you could chat with the chef a lot and even drink with him!
Sushi notes:
The rice was even warmer than Sushi Zo’s, which was kind of a con for me. The rice was similar to Sasabune’s rice in NYC when I went; I have to admit that the rice was really soft and fluffy, though it did break apart easily once or twice (a problem that Sasabune also had). It did feel a little inconsistent at times, though—for a few pieces, the rice would at times feel slightly grainy, but this particular issue wasn’t too big of a deal.
The fish was VERY fresh, and it seemed like nearly all of his ingredients came from Japan.
Monte
Victor
tadv3
Happy Noms 