Shoya

19th November 2011

The final restaurant has arrived and was completed with a trip to Shoya on a Monday night. A multi floor restaurant with different sections within the restaurant offering different eating and entertainment option. I was shown to my seat at the Sushi bar where i had a view of the chefs as they prepared the fish.

Reasonable dark with a heavy wood theme and calligraphy on the wall. After being seated i was offered a drink which i chose Sapporo and then had a run through of the menus. There was a degustation menu with several different options including a tasting option where u selected your own menu from the degustation options and the a la carte menu.

I went for the Chef's Omakase $120 option. Offering 12 different courses it was a long procession of food that was explained in great detail and in respectful and quiet tones by the waiting staff (except for desert).

We started off with a Salmon Carpaccio that was amazingly thinly sliced and cured served with salmon roe, black truffle, sour plum sauce and Wasabi mousse. Excellent combos of flavours and textures and a great opener.

The next dish was Kingyo. Served on a spoon it was one bit of chicken mince with plum and a sweet glace. Good flavours and good presentation and served very hot.

The next dish was also served in an interesting manner in an oyster shell and consisted of diced awabi and combined with monk fish liver and topped with home made cream cheese. The fish and livers was rich and tasty and contrasted well by the soft cream cheese.

The next 2 dishes were too of the most elaborately presented dish i have seen. The first being the Hatching Ocean egg. First a plate was put down with a salt holder that was for the egg. Then a wooden box was brought out with hay and a egg inside that was taken out with the waiter putting on white gloves to handle the food and placed on the salt holder. The taste was also excellent as inside the cracked egg was a steamed savoury egg custard with black truffle, spinach puree and a small piece of tempura scampi.

The next dish took it up another level with the Assortment of sashimi course. A square bowl filled with ice had a big glass bowl on top at a 45 degree angle filled with delicate, thinly sliced fish and vegetables. The fish was of sensational quality and the soy sauce and fresh wasabi was an excellent addition.

Moving on to the next course was the start of the more substantial course with a beef spinach roll. An ox tongue wrapped with spinach souffle and served with beans and pink peppercorn. The beef was very good and worked well with the light but flavourful spinach. (although this dish was difficult to eat with chopsticks).

The next dish was proclaimed as the waiter's favourite and consisted of a whole spider crab leg with half of the leg exposed and deep fried in tempura batter and the other half with the shell still attached that required breaking. A light and delicious tempura batter and beautiful crab meat inside it was a very quality dish.

After the crab leg we had a dish that was not on the original menu and was a palate cleanser of Japanese sorbet infused with bitter orange and topped with caviar. It did indeed clean the palate and itself had a great flavour of orange that did not overpower.

The next dish was a soup of snapper and thin rice noodles with salmon roe with the snapper broth poured at the table. Rich decadent and full of flavour it was a great dish.

The final 3 savoury items on the menu came out together with a medium rare Wagyu rib eye steak (although it was a bit closer to rare than would be perfectly cooked) and dressed with black truffle, shitake miso sauce and an egg quiche. This was served with mixed rice and a miso soup. The flavours of the beef and nutty black truffle and the sauce worked together well. Not so sure about the quiche and the rice was fluffy and perfectly cooked and had real ingredients and flavour. Miso soup is not really my thing but this was pleasing and didn't have a bitter overpowering fish stock flavour of other soups.

The final item was the desert plate. Featuring 3 different deserts but surprisingly not featuring the flowery and elaborate descriptions of previous courses i was left to guess the exact desert included. A black sesame mousse with green tea powder, chocolate cake topped with a chocolate mousse and a cheesecake with a flavour i couldn't put my finger one but was still very decent. Good flavours although nothing to rival the elaborate cooking and presentation of the savoury dishes.

Overall this restaurant was the best Japanese place i have visited and favourite Japanese restaurant in Melbourne. The presentation of the dishes and quality service was top notch with my preference against Japanese food keeping this restaurant from ranking highly in my rankings but good enough for the top half. If you love Japanese food then this place would definitely be for you. Although the food was not cheap the amount of courses and quality of the fish and dishes was evident throughout and combined with the skill of the chef it led to a memorable evening and a good way to finish my list.