Sokyo Omakase 2 – 31 May 2016

Again, this is a repost of text that was written “shortly” after the visit.

I have this thing for Sokyo and omakases. I like both! The sushi I have at Sokyo is always so good, I feel like sushi anywhere else just isn’t as good! There are of course exceptions (like Umi Kaiten Zushi and all those nice restaurants in Crows Nest), but this is the one I keep coming back to.

I didn’t actually plan to have two omakase sessions in a year, this visit was all due to circumstance – I just happened to be in Sydney, and a winter omakase tends to be more interesting than a summer one – however, I missed out on truffle season by a few weeks. So close yet so far!

Sano san remembered me which is always a plus. And since I was more familiar the second time around, I managed to look around and play with my camera more – like this shot of him plating things up before our omakase started.

Since I’ve been so incredibly busy (I have a life!), I’ve posted this a couple of months after dining here, so my memory of how things tasted is likely hazy. Lots of one liners of “it was delicious!” will be seen here!

First up, aged snapper and abalone. I think this is the first time I’ve had aged snapper, which was great! It wasn’t too fishy at all, even though the ageing process increases fishiness (I think). Plus that abalone was so good!

Cuttlefish noodles, uni, caviar. This was incredibly good. It’s so hard to say if any single dish is better than any other dish – last time I had the marinated tuna which was a completely different flavour profile. But since it’s winter – uni galore!

I love the way this was presented. The golden bowl was so pretty and made this dish look so grand! Some lovely tuna belly.

White fish first – NZ snapper. I absolutely love fresh snapper. I think this was the same as last time. I love the scoring!

Alfonsino, another white fish. I think Sano said it was Imperador, but Google tells me it’s the same kind of fish.

 

Yellow fin tuna. A nice, lean cut. Always good.

Big eye tuna (NZ). Sano was very happy about getting some big-eye tuna, and it was certainly delicious – made tastier by the marbling you can see here!

Pearl meat. I liked February’s visit of pearl meat better, but this was still good.

Big eye tuna muscle. I think he said muscle.

And of course, big eye tuna belly. So distinctly different from the other cuts!

But this is the gold – otoro from Japan. It’s so visibly different, and melts in the mouth oh so much more!

More big eye tuna! This time it was grilled. My friend and I got a big chunk to share, and it was so good! As we were eating through it, Sano san did look a little concerned, as he spotted it being slightly undercooked. I didn’t even care, it was so delicious! And a place like this has such fresh seafood, I wasn’t the least bit worried about any risks associated with undercooking food – I mean, I do that a lot at home anyway!

And then some mackerel – fresh stuff this time, with a healthy dose of citrus dressing, which was needed since it’s such a strong flavoured oily fish. I love mackerel!

Time for a different angle! And I thought this shot came out quite nicely. No salmon anywhere this time, instead this was ocean trout. Yay! I sometimes get tired of having salmon everywhere I go, so this was a nice change.

This fried imperador wing was pretty cool, and very tasty! In fact because it was deep fried, I asked Sano if it was possible to eat the fin. He wasn’t too sure, but I gave it a go anyway, and yes, it was great!

I call this one the (uni)giri taco, because it’s an uni nigiri placed in a seaweed shell. I love uni!

Oh, I appear to have skipped a photo of our aburi scampi. But this one will do! Here’s Sano flaming them to bits, but leaving them oh so tender and tasty on the inside!

It was about this time that he paused the omakase to focus on making this – a really super fancy chirashi with some Yarra Valley golden caviar. Man, how does one obtain golden caviar??? And after looking around a little, I realised that Chase was in the house! I can’t believe I recognised him! It was his day off and he was just walking about – too fast for me to prep my lens and shoot though. But that’s ok – I got a picture of his food instead! Muahahaha.

Cuttlefish – turns out I still don’t like it. I guess it’s the texture. I don’t really like slimy stuff (which raw squid tends to be).

Then it was the scallop taco-ception! The shot wasn’t so great, but it’s the same rice wedged in a scallop wedged in a seaweed shell – otherwise known to me as the taco within a taco. I always love this one!

Aburi kingfish belly. I’m glad there was less kingfish this time around, for the same reason as my feelings about salmon – I get it enough everywhere else.

My friend and I were both feeling pretty full about now, and Sano checked in with us. I said I didn’t want the hand roll this time and to go straight to the tamago (I did refer to my previous blog post to track where we were at, and Sano said that there were more courses this time as well). So egg it was! That fluffy spongey cakey-textured goodness.

And my cheeky dessert shot! Goma street, mocha, fruit panna cotta and my favourite, strawberry ice cream mochi.

Thus ends my second omakase! It was still very reasonably priced so I was very happy. I would have to keep doing this every time I’m in Sydney! I love Sydney.