First: A hot towel on arrival. Spa-style timber interiors. Glass sliding doors etched with the words “Boutique Saké Room”. Minimum spend.
Then: A kitchen door with views of a gloomy car park. A Doraemon figurine in the bottle cabinet. In the fruit bowl, someone’s drawn a smiley face on a sweet potato.
Darlinghurst’s newest Japanese joint, Amuro, is neither chic nor shabby. Or maybe it’s both. But the restaurant’s swirl of contradictions is actually one of its drawcards.
They don’t do reservations here – if you want one of the restaurant’s 20 seats, you’d better arrive well before 6pm. The majority of the spots are counter-top, front-row tickets to the chef show, with a couple of two-seat, window-side tables away from the heat of the kitchen.
Through the other side of your hot towel, you’ll be greeted with a postcard. The image is from a city sidestreet – geishas in the shadow of a towering pagoda in what looks like old-timey Kyoto – and on the reverse, a short list of dishes are written in hand-scrawled caps beneath the words “Week 34”.
And tonight, conversation is on the menu. Literally.
Amuro’s dishes are ever-changing, rotating in tune with the seasons and at the volition of the young team’s culinary creativity. What doesn’t change, though, is the drinks etiquette. With no written wine list, the two house rules are (a) you must order at least one drink, and (b) you must order them only “through conversation”. This has come about, so the staff say, because such is the average Australian’s unfamiliarity with saké varieties, customers usually end up asking for help anyway. Fortunately, the friendly staff are highly generous with their tasters. Highly generous.
Kei Tokiwa, Amuro’s owner and all-knowing saké connoisseur, pours us a procession of sip-sized samples, with evocative descriptions of each bottle’s birthplace. On the sweetest side, there’s Green Label “Ginjo” by Abe Shuzo, a Niigata-based brewery that has produced small saké batches since the turn of the 19th century. The “Junmaishu Akitabare”, from the century-old Akita Saké Brewery in northern Japan, is served chilled and sharp to the taste, and is a more dry, aromatic option.
Once you’ve taken your pick of the 20 or so saké varieties, you’ll be poured a near-overflowing glass of the stuff (unfortunately, it might be too late check the price – some tip the $30 mark for a shot glass-sized dose). Alternatively, you can also opt for beer and umeshu – a type of Japanese plum wine – or whiskey.
The food servings at Amuro are small, playful and thoughtfully plated, with some placed in front of us with an instruction to “eat in one bite”. The plates emerge over the counter direct from the hands and knives of a small gang of chefs, shoulder-to-shoulder in a prep space about the size of a walk-in wardrobe. The proximity is such that you feel like you’re part of the delivery, intercepting chef’s conversations, feeling each beat of the chopping board, absorbing the aromas of every unleashed ingredient.
One of the “eat in one bite” directives accompanies the ikura and wasabi leaf “taco”. Say what you will about $11 for a solitary mouthful of food (read: quite expensive), you can’t fault the flavour. The heart-shaped wasabi leaf is as violent and tear-inducing as the well-known sushi topper, but the luminescent ikura balls are a fitting foil. Similar to caviar, which is the salted roe of sturgeon, ikura is from salmon, and here it bursts sweet between our teeth to cleanse our mouth from the wasabi’s peppery inferno.
Other fish options include an udon with karasumi (more roe, mullet this time); grilled shishamo and sashimi; and hiramasa kingfish with finger lime. You won’t regret the Hokkaido scallops, a dozen almond-sized scallops, raw, in a bowl of umami-rich 'umeboshi' (salted Japanese plum) dressing.
Meat highlights, meanwhile, are the Wagyu tartare; karaage chicken with yuzu mayo; and a choice of grilled duck breast and pork belly skewers – while the veggie-friendly list is slim but tasty.
The peppers are a band of fruity, full-spectrum capsicum (lightly charred, shiny with oil, and sprinkled with chopped chives) encircling a glob of tofu-based aioli, indistinguishable from the OG sauce. The “umami tomatoes” come as three slices, sheathed in three shiso leaves, the sweet, juicy fruit nicely complemented by the aromatic shiso and crunchy sesames. Then there’s the stand-out yaki-mochi, a grilled rice cake, sweet and spongy with a crisp outer casing, a savoury twist courtesy of a douse of miso butter.
To finish, go for the coffee jelly (which is much better than the other option, a pretty plain wafer biscuit called a monaka bite). It comes capped with a thick, sweet-and-salty cream. It’s small, playful and packing surprises, rendering the restaurant’s all round feel in sublime jellied form.