teresa 4 January 2010 Japanese, Sydney, CBD 8 Comments  Print This Post  Email This Post

Here’s a place for some comfort food

As we move into the hot weather, I crave for Japanese food more and more. The lightly-flavoured dishes offered by the japanese cuisine is a great refreshing touch to balance out the heat. So whenever this heat looms, I call my bubbly eating chickadee, B, for a cleansing dinner. There is an abundance of Japanese restaurants in Sydney, which makes deciding where to eat a tough choice.

I enjoy eating around the Surry Hills area due to its quiet and easy-going environment; less crowds, less traffic, less everything but eateries! As a last minute choice, I decide to go for a japanese-style cafe/restaurant called Emon. Located on Cleveland St on the next block from one of my other favourites, Sushi Suma, we walk into Emon welcomed to a warm, cosy atmosphere, filled with a japanese homely decor, an open kitchen and sake bottles of all sizes lining the kitchen counter. (woohoo Sake!)

Cute table decorations

Sake Bottles

As a staple, we start off with…

Edemame soy beans, $4.50

Boiled green soybean with touch of salt is a great starter and stomach filler whilst you wait for the rest of your food. I think its all the munching effort to get the beans out which makes time fly by quicker

Sake tasting set A, $26 (50mlx4)

With a counter lined with bottles of sake, I was sure to order some! Emon’s sake menu is quite extensive, with around ten choices as well as umeshu and shochu. It was just too hard to decide, so I go for the tasting set A (they had two different sets: A or B). This included: Dassai, Hakushika Sennenju, Snow Beauty and Urakasumi. Just like wine, we were advised to drink from left to right starting from the lightest-flavoured to the heavier-flavoured sake.

The Dassai was a little lighter in taste, not sweet and more bitter(?). As I tasted through the tasters, each turned sweeter and sweeter. I actually liked the Urakasumi the most.

Prawn gyoza, $9.50 (5pcs)

As a non-meater eater, I never get to eat gyoza. They always look so juicy, and so when I saw PRAWN gyoza, it was my first pick. The gyoza was perfectly pan-fried and the filling was absolutely fabulous with crunchy prawns. The dipping sauce with a bit of chilli gave the gyoza that extra kick. One of my favourite dumpling/gyoza experiences!

Emon Special Futomaki Roll, $22.00 (8pcs)

Futo-maki (thick sushi roll) assorted sashimi with avocado, flying fish roe & mayonnaise

This roll was surprisingly thick and filling. It was a little too big to fit a whole piece straight into the *gob*, so a few bites were required. Sadly, because of this, it was falling apart and particularly hard to enjoy this completely. But I still enjoyed the flavours since fish roe is one of my favourites.

B & I didn’t have much of an appetite tonight since it was already quite late, so this was our last dish… The Emon Special Bakudan. This dish was highly recommended from some of the reviews I had read prior to dinner. What is this?, you ask. I actually had quite a bit of fun with this! So here goes…

Assorted diced sashimi + onsen tamago (half-boiled egg)

First you get the sashimi mixture, topped with a nearly raw egg, and mix it all together with a dash of soy sauce. Then you pour this mixture into the second bowl filled with sushi rice and continue mixing.

The starting product

So THIS (refer to above) turns into THIS (refer to below)…

The finished product

The bowl looks quite small in the image, but really, its an medium size bowl of something like a sashimi-don. It’s times like this that I wish I had a big appetite. There was a lot more I wanted to try! Some other menu recommendations would be the Okonomiyaki (3 flavours available) or the King Prawn Tempura roll.

With the abundance of japanese restaurants around Sydney, the experience I had at Emon was different. The service was warming and friendly, the food tasted healthy and interesting and the overall experience was fun (especially with the Badukan & Sake tasting set.) If you’re in the area looking for some comfort food, Emon should be your pick.

Emon Japanese Cafe Restaurant
432 Cleveland Street,
Surry Hills, NSW
Ph: (02) 9698 0778
Web: http://www.emon.com.au/
Open for dinner Monday to Saturday.