Amuro
Amuro is the sake bar to end all sake bars, but the sake list officially doesn’t exist here; it isn’t written down but in the head of the sommelier, who comes to each diner to find out what sorts of flavours they’re looking for before pouring a taster of a few suggestions he has. Unfortunately, I didn’t drink any sake on the night I visited; it is a symptom of being on-call almost all of the time. And you’re obligated to if you’d like to dine at this speck of a 20 person restaurant. So I settled for a pot of genmaicha, roasted rice and Sencha green tea. My tea arrived in a rustic metal teapot with a long wooden handle and I felt (almost) equally happy sipping this as I would sake.
Amuro is but a baby, it had been open for only 16 weeks on the night I dined there. The menu changes weekly and features thoughtful, small dishes to share, and most of them will have you rolling your eyes declaring “Wow, isn’t this amazing!”. The restaurant itself is a sleek sliver of a place near the corner of Crown and Goulburn Streets, the design aesthetic incredibly chic whilst retaining some naturalistic elements of the Japanese ethos. The main bar features dark wood with a vertical slat feature running overhead, and is juxtaposed by smooth, cool concrete.
Japanese hospitality is unrivalled, and as you finally sit down (because they uncompromisingly do not take bookings) you are immediately handed a hot towel and offered a drink. We were seated along the main bar where, just within earshot, the chefs are preparing every delectable dish you’ll eat that evening right in front of you. It is mesmerising seeing sashimi be sliced, mochi grilled on the hibachi, tempura dipped into the deep fryer. It is also very helpful for the chef to answer the musings you have about your food that you thought you’d said quietly enough to your dining partner. For example, I can confirm that the green stuff in the tako wasabi was fresh wasabi, and not celery. I also have on it good authority that the almost crunchy, tangy bits on top of the grilled mackerel was minutely diced citrus fruit and not pickled onions.
There will be a few recognisable dishes on the menu, a tako wasabi here, a kara-age chicken there, but the rest of it is delightfully unfamiliar. The menu is handwritten roughly from smallest to largest, and we started with the smalls of tako wasabi and mackerel with citrus chilli. I had relinquished mackerel to the back of my mind and the childhood memories of eating fishy, overcooked canned mackerel, bones and all, in a tomato and onion sauce. But no, here it shined, sublimely fresh with the lightest of kisses from the grill that I think all fish would benefit from if you weren’t going to eat sashimi style. The mackerel was dressed with the aforementioned finely diced citrus fruits that leant a tangy crunch and was finished with Shichi-mi tōgarashi and lime zest. I could have eaten tiny plate after tiny plate after tiny plate of these.
I think I have for the most part done my dash with chicken kara-age, but Amuro’s was a pleasing example that was kissed with ginger and had a nice dry finish to the fry. The mushroom tempura however is a dish I haven’t done my dash with it would seem. I’ve had badly stodgy, undercooked, overly thick batters before but this one was so crispy, thin and lacy it elevated this medley of mushrooms into something gloriously moreish and meaty.
Our final two dishes were new ones to me and I relished every mouthful of them. The scallops with umeboshi was the best treatment of scallops I’ve had to date. Sashimi style, thinly sliced leaves of unbelievably soft and delicate scallop, were nurtured in a glaze-like dressing of umeboshi (salty sour pickled plums) that err on the side of just sweet with a little chilli, sesame and chives. And it was pretty as a petal too. The unagi rice with sansho was a warming and substantial dish that will make you fall in love with unagi if you weren’t a fan of it already. A bowl of glazed unagi eel on rice arrived with a wee omelette I saw one of the chefs whip up in a teeny tiny pan accompanied by a cute bamboo shaker of sansho pepper to sprinkle on top. The spice was fragrant, a little peppery and lip tingling, a more nuanced version of Szechuan pepper as it were.
I came away from my dinner at Amuro wanting to use every Gen-Z and hipster superlative I knew to describe how much this dinner slapped. Amuro is a restaurant I would happily break my own rule to eat at again and again and again.