OK, so now I’m on a ramen roll   From previous posts, we have mentioned that Shoya is one of our favourite Japanese restaurants in town, possibly even our favourite.  Sure, their service can be a bit scatterbrained and sometimes their “nouvelle” Japanese  fare [...]]]> 5 Market Lane, Melbourne
Phone 03 9650 0848

OK, so now I’m on a ramen roll   From previous posts, we have mentioned that Shoya is one of our favourite Japanese restaurants in town, possibly even our favourite.  Sure, their service can be a bit scatterbrained and sometimes their “nouvelle” Japanese  fare can be hit and miss.  But overall, we’ve always enjoyed our meals there.  They do a set lunch that’s one of the best value in town, given the amount of food you get.  Their yakiniku is superb and I rate Shoya’s sashimi as one of the finest anywhere.

However, a little known fact is that Shoya does offer donburi and noodle dishes, which can be overlooked given the size of their menu.  These one-bowl meals are perfect if you don’t want to lash out on a multi-course omakase.  And kiss my grits, they also do a ramen y’all!  But how does it rate??

Well, first to the positives.  The chashu was pretty damn fine – fatty, tender, moist and bursting with umami goodness.  The noodles, too, were tasty; not too soggy, but quite katame (al dente).  At $15, it was also not too badly priced, given the surroundings.  But now to the deal-breaking negative: it was badly let down by the broth.  Not that the broth was not tasty.  It simply wasn’t ramen broth, tasting more like a broth for udon or soba.  In fact, the broth was so generic-tasting that I couldn’t really discern if it was shoyu or shio style.  There was no guts to the stock, no umami.  Which is a shame, because with mind-blowing broth, this could have been a devastating ramen.

I still heart Shoya, but not for their ramen

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 [...]]]> 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).

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Shoya (you can read about previous experiences here, here and here).  They have often taken my breath away with the quality of their ingredients and execution of their dishes, hence the reason [...]]]> 5 Market Lane, Melbourne
Phone: 03 9650 0848

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Shoya (you can read about previous experiences here, here and here).  They have often taken my breath away with the quality of their ingredients and execution of their dishes, hence the reason I keep returning. At other times, well…I am just stumped at how wrong they can get it.

On this occassion we chose the $100 Chef’s Omakase – upsold from the $85 degustation at the promise of some delectable Hokkaido crab.

We started with the unagi canape, a stunning mouthful of flavours that must be taken in one singular and mouthwatering bite.  On the bottom, a caramalised slice of unagi (eel) marinated in miso, topped with sweet flakes of crab meat, some finely sliced chilli, salty poppy salmon roe and a dirty big slice of black truffle.  Oh yes…this one was bang on right.

Also a winner was the grilled miso sea perch (which is similar in style to Nobu’s black cod with miso). It was layered with a slice of foie gras, creamy tomato mousse, a slice of sweet and umami smoked perch roe and a singular edamame.  Once again a perfect creamy combination of flavours.

One thing they do *really* well at Shoya is the sashimi, and this assortment was a study in how sashimi should be done. Sitting in an iced dome, tiles of orangey-pink salmon, deep red tuna, opaque and perky swordfish, a rosette of kingfish (with tobiko roe in the centre) and some sea urchin roe spiked with gold leaf. If it was any fresher it would be swimming and blowing bubbles in water, and each piece elicited one of those eyes-closed-savour-the-moment type moments.

This canape was unusual and teetered on the “I’m not so sure” fence, possibly because it was lukewarm verging on cold.  A spinach pancake/sponge contained a farce (fine pressed mince) of beef, topped with a slice of grilled ox-tongue. The plate was decorated with jus, edamame and pine kernals.  All the flavours were there, but it was just not right; the plate and the food were cold.

Then to the dish we were waiting for – Hokkaido crab.  The long meaty legs (these things were 30cm long!) had been mostly shelled with only the tips remaining incased, and then tempura’d in crisp batter.  Wedges of lemon and a dish of green tea salt sat to the side, perfect for seasoning.  This really was the highlight of the night. The crab meat was succulent.

Almost toro-like tuna had been rolled in shreds of nori and grilled quickly to remain pink in the centre. Unfortunately (like the ox-tongue) this dish was tepid and served on a cold plate.  As the kitchen is downstairs, I’m wondering whether it sat on the pass for a wee while?  I don’t know if it’s just me, but sometimes you can taste when food is “alive”, when it’s just been seared or grilled or dressed or prepared.  This just felt a little on the “dead” side (no pun intended).

Next up was the wagyu, which *should* have been a highlight of the meal.  It was served on what I gather was a baked sliced potato torte, which was stale, overcooked and not at all pleasant. The wagyu, grilled rare to the point of raw, was submerged in a truffle sauce and garnished with even more slices of black truffle. The elements of this dish alone would have cost an arm and a leg, yet they f#@ked it up by serving it cold!  I just don’t get it! You can see it was hot at one stage as the black tuffle slice on top had gone limp (not like the perky slices on the unagi canape). So why serve up such premium ingredients so poorly?

Anyway, it was the end of our omakase and we were onto desserts.  We had their siganture sea urchin cheesecake, which is described as a “surprise mix of fresh sea urchin smothered and cooked to make perfect and surprising cheesecake”.  Surprise! It was indeed an interesting dessert – quite unexplainable actually.  To the side was the kurogoma panacotta, or black sesame pudding covered with soy bean and green tea powder. Despite the fact it looked like a blob, and was ever so disconcerting colourwise, it tasted a treat!

So, at the end of this experience, what were my thoughts?  Well, I thought the food was hit and miss, the biggest miss being the wagyu.  The first couple of canapes, the sashimi and the crab were absolutely awesome.  I also found the presentation, while it looked a stunning, to be difficult to manage.  There were five of us eating, and some of the canapes especially were hard to pick up without ruining the integrity of the presentation.  The service on the night was also good, which is a great improvement on some previous visits.

I have written about Shoya before (refer here and here), but this is the spring rall (sic) of scampi which is part of the matsu special lunch set ($33). Inside the spring roll wrapping is a de-shelled butterflied scampi stuffed with a delicate mix of pork mince and fragrant herbs.  An ume [...]]]>

I have written about Shoya before (refer here and here), but this is the spring rall (sic) of scampi which is part of the matsu special lunch set ($33). Inside the spring roll wrapping is a de-shelled butterflied scampi stuffed with a delicate mix of pork mince and fragrant herbs.  An ume and mentaiko mayonnaise adds sharp and refreshing contrast to the deep fried spring roll pastry.  Speaking of which, they must hold this thing by its antennae in the hot oil to cook the pastry, as the top remains cooked, but certainly untouched by the scathing oil. Neat.

Anyway, I digress.  I also wanted to draw your attention to the rest of this delightful matsu set, or should I say, the menu description of this set. You get:

Sashimi, Sushi, Grilled fish, Spring Rall (sic) of Scampi, Savory Egg Cutard (sic), Small Bowl of Dish (sic), Mixed Steamed Rice, Miso Soup, Dessert.

WTF is a small bowl of dish? 

The simple things in life are often the best, such as the Kaisen Chirashi ($21.80) lunchtime set at Shoya. Fat tiles of tuna, swordfish, kingfish, salmon, arc shell (perhaps?!?), prawn, tobiko and a few other unknown piscatorial treats. All of it fresh. All of it tasting [...]]]> 25 Market Lane, Melbourne
Phone: 03 9650 0848

The simple things in life are often the best, such as the Kaisen Chirashi ($21.80) lunchtime set at Shoya. Fat tiles of tuna, swordfish, kingfish, salmon, arc shell (perhaps?!?), prawn, tobiko and a few other unknown piscatorial treats. All of it fresh. All of it tasting like the sea. Sitting on top perfect grains of bitey white rice and spikey slivers of toasted nori.

You can read about a previous visit to Shoya here.