Shoya – time to tackle a la carte

5 Market Lane, Melbourne
Phone 03 9650 0848

I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve been to Shoya (check out some of our posts here), but it’s a perpetual favourite, generally for the quality and variety of their sashimi. They also do a rather fantastic lunch set (in the $25-$30 price range), that is excellent value for money.

We have done omakase and yakiniku a number of times, but for this visit, we decided to tackle the a la carte.  If you read in the comments from previous posts, some might find this a daunting experience.  The menu is quite large and can be a little difficult to navigate, especially on the size of the dishes, cost etc. But I think on this visit, we actually did quite well!  We did perhaps order one dish to many (there were four of us), but I think generally we ordered well.

To start with we went with one of the specials – the amusingly titled “Beef finger”.  At the bottom of this canape lay a small  beef steak that was topped with squares of foie gras and house made cheese.  Small red pepper corns and pinenuts were the garnish, and a juicy jus kept the zucchini wrapped package wonderfully tender.

Another starter – shitake mushroom filled with minced scallop and quail egg.  It had been dipped, bottom down, into tempura batter, and deep fried (on one side only). It was served with a seasoned salt and a squeeze of lemon.

I love the menu description for this one – “SHOYA’s signature and must try fired dish Mashed scallops softy surround the quail egg topped with a whole shiitake mushroom to make it perfect”

Onto the sashimi course – and what a wonderful array of fish!  Tuna (both maguro and regular steak), salmon, gurnard, snapper, swordfish, kingfish, salmon roe, scallop, arc shell – just to name a few.   Perfection.

Dan has this thing for fried chicken at the moment, so we could not got past the Chicken Karaage, the Japanese version of KFC.  The crunchy spicy chicken pieces were served with a dollop of hot mustard – a good accompaniment.

Any ideas what this protein might be?

Especially when served with these buns?

It’s actually ox tongue (Gyu-Tan Koshu-Ni), that had been slow cooked in red wine and spices for two days. It was so tender that it just about flaked to bits when I picked it up with my chopsticks.  This really is one very rich piece of meat.

Slowing down, we moved to the tofu steak in a citrussy/teriyaki sauce.  Truth be told, it was perhaps a little on the sweet side, and tasted almost cumquatty.  Not entirely unpleasant, but just too sweet to eat much of.

Last dish was the duck with miso marinade with century egg sauce noodles.  I was too full to sample this one, but Dan said it was a pretty full-on dish of flavours, and the duck was very gamey.

For dessert, you can’t beat a simple green tea ice-cream, topped with a little dollop of sweetened red bean paste.

We also sampled the multi-layered Tonyu, a soy bean milk pudding studded with strawberries, kiwifruit and red beans, topped with a layer of green tea pudding, and topped again with a sweetened black sesame syrup. It was great – not too sweet, yet refreshing.

We really enjoyed our foray into the a la carte, and look forward to exploring other dishes (…we did play it rather safe this time).