Stephanie Wood

Open kitchens are all the rage these days, but the Japanese have long been ahead of the game when it comes to the theatrics of interactive dining. Whether you want to watch blades move at dizzying speed across a grill or watch flames climb high into the air while you test your hand-eye coordination, teppanyaki is where it’s at. From the refined to the raucous, we’ve put together a list of Sydney’s best.

In the Japanese manga series Dragon Ball, Kuririn is an epic martial arts hero, brave, loyal, good-natured and bald. In a modest Japanese restaurant on the Pacific Highway in Crows Nest, a chef nicknamed ‘Kuririn’ for his likeness to the manga character, is possibly the most unsung culinary hero in the country. Behind a small sushi counter at the back of HaNa Ju-Rin restaurant, Kuririn, aka Tomoyuki Matsuya, is a performance artist. He works solemnly, with precision and economy of movement – deft hands forming vinegared rice; the smallest, most elegant wrist gesture as he pulls a svelte Japanese knife through a piece of fish; a neat tilt of his head as he places the sushi on your plate. If you’ve chosen his multi-course, multi-hour omakase menu (chef’s selection), Matsuya-san’s offerings will start with appetisers: perhaps a chunk of tender Fremantle octopus, charred and brushed with truffle oil, a little explosion of umami flavour, followed by the silkiest chawanmushi (egg custard) and nutty-sweet gomae (spinach salad with a sesame dressing). An elegant ceramic plate with a selection of sashimi is up next, before the real fun begins — Matsuya-san’s nigiri sushi, jewel-like slices of raw seafood on vinegared rice. They come one piece at a time, 15 pieces in all, in a glorious nigiri sushi pageant. The chef places the sushi on your plate and you’ve got eight seconds. Experts declare that if the sushi isn’t in your mouth in that time, you’ve missed it at its best. First there's