The best Japanese restaurants in Sydney

Ante is King Street’s dark and moody sake heaven, backed up by excellent food and a killer soundtrack. Is it a bar? Is it a restaurant? Who really cares when the cooking is this delicious, courtesy of chef Jemma Whiteman, and the vibe is so on point. The menu is curated to complement the more than 65 types of sake on offer from 21 breweries across Japan. We say: Go wild.

Time Out tip: Ante doesn’t take bookings, so head down early to add your name to the list and hit up one of Newtown’s cracking bars while you wait, like Bar Planet or Pleasure Club.

Tucked behind a curtain inside a former hummus bar lives Nomidokoro Indigo, Darlinghurst's tiniest izakaya. It’s the from the Hatena Group, whose quiet empire already boasts Haymarket’s Nakano Darling, and Crows Nest’s Yakiroti Yurippi and Tachinomi YP. Owners Tin Jung Shea, Mitomo Somehara and Chris Wu have overseen an exceptionally tidy fitout that features 11 counterside seats, a four-person standing bar, and a small number of al fresco tables out the front. 

Time Out tip: Be sure to ask about the seafood specials – if you’re lucky you’ll catch the John Dory sashimi, which comes as thin slips of fish with a little disc of buttery liver pâté, alongside the more familiar accompaniments of soy sauce and wasabi.

The broth is the colour of an egg yolk. It tastes unlike any other ramen in Sydney. If anything, it’s like a Sichuan hot-pot but less aggressive, slightly nutty, with that same addictive savouriness all good ramens have. There’s no chashu on top, but there’s a cluster of coriander leaves, some springy wood-ear mushrooms, three velvety medallions of chicken and a smear of crimson chilli paste along the edge of the bowl. It’s called chilli coriander ramen, but don’t bother Googling it – this isn’t a recipe you’ll find in traditional cookbooks or Japanese restaurants.

Ito is a Japanese izakaya from the team who brought us elegant Middle Eastern restaurant Aalia and pastel-hued Nour, with a former Nobu and Cho Cho San chef leading the charge. If there’s eggplant on the menu, be sure to order that. And we’re still thinking about the smashable Watermelon Spritz.

Time Out tip: The soft mochi and fruit sorbet is excellent – even if you're full, don't skip dessert.

Jonathan Barthelmess and Sam Christie's Potts Point mainstay is a playful take on the izakaya trope, brought to life as much by George Livissianis's cream-on-white pared-back interiors as it is by exciting plates like crab fried rice with XO sauce and kastuobushi. The drinks list impresses as much as the food (sake flights FTW) and, of course, so does the epic green tea soft serve that inevitably marks the end to every repeat visit.

Time Out tip: At $65 per person, Cho's set menu is great value – and delicious. Order that.

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 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.

You want heart pipes? Liver? Gizzards? Gristle? They’ve got 'em, along with plenty more protein that isn’t quite so gutsy. The meats are grilled over white charcoal and served over piles of roughly chopped raw white cabbage. By the time you’re done with your juicy, salty chicken thigh or crisp folds of strangely sweet chicken skin, that cabbage will have turned into a well-seasoned side of its own. On Monday evenings and lunch times you'll big bowls of ramen and also make sure you order the sizzling gyoza. 

Found on top of the Cartier flagship store in the CBD, Joji is a glamorous, Japanese-inspired bar and diner. There’s lots to like, including the sky-high views, the shimmering interiors, and the fact that it’s open until 2am from Wednesday to Saturday. Then there’s the fun and punchy snack menu, featuring delicious things like warm bread filled with curry sauce, a banging scallop and bugs sando, and fire-licked skewers.

Time Out tip: Looking to impress friends from out-of-town? Bring them here for a drink.

There are many things to like about Double Bay's Japanese diner, Tanuki. Firstly, the venue is multifaceted, with alfresco seating out the front, a polished dining room decorated with blue artworks by artist Daimon Downey, an outdoor courtyard anchored by a 30-year-old Japanese liquid amber tree, and then down the back, there's a moody and slick bar area for late-night rendezvous and cocktails. Keen for a glass of crisp white and sashimi? Take a seat at the sushi counter. What about sake and a couple of Wagyu skewers charred on the robata grill? Sure thing. A long lunch with friends? Sign us up.

The chef's selection set menu of 20 courses at Haco may sound like a gastronomic misstep, particularly given that every course is deep-fried, however you'll do well to overcome this mental hurdle and trust in head chef Kensuke Yada's process. Variety is the key to success for any omakase, but particularly when frying is involved. A delicate balance of around 10 battered courses is followed by five tempura dishes, and finally five kushi-age (crumbed then fried) courses. This variation on technique is the secret to endurance.

Genzo, a fun and modern Japanese restaurant and sake bar, is now open in Etymon’s supercharged Walker Street precinct. Lit up by rainbow neon lights and works by Tokyo artist Masanori Ushiki, it’s a cool space, and features a 28-seater cocktail and sake bar (with its own temperature-controlled sake room), a 90-seat dining room and an all-weather terrace. Executive chef Rhys Connell (ex-The Gantry and Sepia) is heading up the kitchen at Genzo alongside Tuan Colombo (ex-Sokyo, Nobu London) serving riffs on Japanese dishes. Flame-licked skewers and sticks cooked on the robata are the go here. Our pick? The Blackmore Wagyu glazed with yuzu-kosho and wrapped in a Tasmanian wasabi leaf.

At Izakaya Fujiyama, pristine sashimi and sushi is made from many more of the fishes that swim in the sea; the familiar standards supplemented by the less-usual likes of sardines and the special of gurnard, the angriest-looking fish you’re likely to come across. Fujiyama on Waterloo Street is a simple fit out with an open kitchen, long bar, crimson paint and a wall of sake in a hard-surfaced high-ceilinged box of a room. 

There’s no set menu at Izy Aki, not really. Instead, chef-owner Darren Templeman creates an omakase-style menu each day depending on what produce is in season. You’re in very good hands here, with Templeman serving innovative, delicious dishes with Japanese, French and Italian influences. The intimate restaurant has moved from its original home in The Rocks – you'll now find it on Oxford Street, in Saint Peter's former digs.

Watching chef Nobuyuki Ura at work is like watching an artist paint a picture or a surfer glide on a wave, in that their passion and love for what they do shines through like sunlight. Ura has been mastering the art of Japanese cuisine for more than 35 years – including 11 of those years spent as the executive chef at Merivale’s Sushi E. His passion, dedication and killer knife skills come to fruition at Ora, a sophisticated Japanese restaurant that seamlessly marries traditional techniques with modern touches.

All hail the King. King Clarence, to be exact, which is the name of the contemporary pan-Asian restaurant found on the corner of King and Clarence Streets in Sydney. The 100-seat spot is by the award-winning Bentley Restaurant Group, and headed up by killer chef Khanh Nguyen. Here, Nguyen draws influences from the flavours and techniques found in China, Korea and Japan. It's fun, yum and exciting food.

Time Out tip: Yes, you most certainly should order the pillowy fish finger bao with mustard greens, cheese, pickled chilli and pops of salmon caviar.

Ryo’s fans swear this is some of the best ramen you’ll find in all of Sydney. Duck your way past the traditional Japanese noren curtains hanging out the front and you’ll think you’ve been transported straight to a Tokyo noodle house. The lemon yellow walls are plastered with a dizzying number of banners in Japanese script. Everywhere you look it’s heads down, as diners hoe into steaming bowls of soup filled with crinkly ramen noodles.

Bay Nine Omakase is an intimate ten-seat counter omakase (chef's choice) eatery in The Rocks’ Campbell’s Stores waterfront dining precinct. Bay Nine Omakase was launched by the capable hands of chef Tomohiro Marshall Oguro (ex-Sushi-E), who creates a new menu every day for those lucky enough to nab a counter spot. A set menu is served to diners in a separate 30-seat area, with some dishes from the omakase alongside a handful of others.

Where can you go to fix up your motorbike, grab an excellent coffee and eat kickass Japanese food in between? Rising Sun Workshop in Newotwn. Order the Prison Bento – it's more delicate than its name suggests. On the day we go in there’s a pile of sticky rice with sour, salty pickled umeboshi plum, silken tofu with shoyu, a selection of crunchy pickles (radish, cucumber, daikon and carrot), tamagoyaki (dashi rolled egg omelette) which is light and not as sweet as that which you get in Japan, yogurt sprinkled with nigella seeds that the waiter tells us he ate in Tokyo and a piece of just-cooked Ulladulla albacore tuna ($5 extra).

Circular Quay’s fine diner Oborozuki now offers a Japanese-French à la carte menu, moving away from its previous kaiseki offering. Daeun Kang, the former sous-chef at Aria, is leading the charge at Oborozuki. Come for an elegant take on Japanese cuisine with classic French techniques, all served with a touch of theatre.

Renowned sushi master, Ryuichi Yoshii heads up Yoshii’s Omakase at Nobu, one of the swathe of upscale restaurants at Crown Sydney. With only 10 seats at the omakase table, this is an intimate dining experience that characterises the omakase experience. Yoshii has worked on his craft for almost four decades, honing the deceptively simple art of rice and fish into a truly moving affair. You'll see bite-sized courses prepared right before your eyes that are not only delicious and inventive, but also exquisite to look at, blurring the lines between art and sustenance.

Izakaya food is, at its core, drinking food. Kaiza Izakaya in Newtown runs with the informality and snack-ready portions at the heart of this Japanese form of dining – but makes a decisive call on forgoing some of its other traditional elements. For instance, it's not sticking to only Japanese flavours. The chef at its helm, Jason Nguyen, is combining a childhood watching his Vietnamese father cook for the family with his culinary education in Tokyo for a menu that melds Japanese technical acuity with the flavours drawing from the five elements of Vietnamese cooking: salt, sweet, bitter, spice and sour. 

Get your hands on one of the best hand rolls we’ve eaten in a very long time. What’s their secret? Here they arrive unwrapped so you can see the filling proudly presented on one of those delicious, salty, fried seaweed sheets. Roll it up so that the crunchy chip adds a textural shell to a seasoned ball of rice topped with tempura sea eel. A length of miso-glazed eggplant adds luxurious softness to another two-bite roll funked up with generous shavings of bonito. You could eat your way through this one, ten-item segment of the menu and have a great time.

At Besuto, fish with finesse is the name of the game. Best, alongside the gregarious chef Hiro Fujita, are trying their hand at the “leave it to you” style of dining that has taken Sydney by storm in recent months. The service at Besuto is up there with any fine diner in town, attentive and personable, guests are encouraged to chat loudly and have some fun as chef Fujita regales them with tales of fish, his life as a young man, and drinking. Each dish is enthusiastically explained by chef Fujita, whose warm energy is palpable. Outside of a few dozen sake bottles and a secret meditation garden, all eyes are on the open kitchen, the stage for a dinner made before your very eyes. 

When ​this glitzy, casino-based Japanese restaurant first opened, we dismissed it as rich kid disco sushi – big flavours and easy​-​to​-​understand hand rolls that still taste good after a sweaty session with Redfoo at Marquee. But if it was once true, now it ain’t necessarily so.

The delicious is in the detail at Juan, the compact Japanese diner in Redfern where there are only four main meals to choose from. Go with a friend and you’ve tried 50 per cent of the menu – a stat that allows little chance for food envy to kick in. Each bowl is an elaborately constructed meal for one, with more flavour layers than a lasagne, accompanied by the kind of meticulous presentation normally reserved for minor dignitaries.

Gogyo comes from the same people who brought Japanese ramen juggernaut Ippudo to Australia. They specialise in a kogashi (which means ‘charred’ in Japanese) ramen, which sees a pan heated to a smoking-hot temperature before a dollop of miso paste is added and then it's deglazed with chicken broth. The resulting ramen is underpinned by a distinct smokiness that’s intense in flavour and appearance.

In an area more known for its beer swilling than cocktail drinking, Saké stands out. And it should – there’s some excitement to be found in this Japanese restaurant and bar. Bar snacks are bite-sized and pack a tasty punch. Salty and often deep-fried, they are perfect accompaniments to the long and potent drink’s list. A hungry group should make a bee-line for the chicken karaage (crunchy crisp-fried pieces of chicken) or the renkon chips – lotus roots that have been lightly fried, sprinkled with coarse rock salt and served with edamame dip. If you’re rolling two deep, opt for the melt-in-your-mouth teriyaki burger balls.

Are we in a back alley in Tokyo or a basement eatery in North Sydney? Put away your passport because, lucky for you, we’re talking Sydney. A small set of stairs from the street will lead you to Taruhachi, a cool little find that will make you feel you’ve been teleported to Japan. It’s not just the smiley Japanese staff peering out from the tiny kitchen, but the handwritten blackboard menu, the self-serve dispenser of hot and cold water, plus the humble neatness of a dining room decorated quirkily with all things Dr Seuss.

This little sushi joint on the southern fringe of Surry Hills has the makings of a winner. Chef RK Tamang has traded his time among the Sydney sushi glitterati – Soyko, Flying Fish and Saké at the Rocks, where he was executive chef – for his own little shop with a pared-back, low-key feel that’s more suburban haunt than hatted resto. On a weeknight, Tamang is the sole chef in the open kitchen, calmly moving between the sushi bar and deep fryer, turning out elaborate maki rolls filled with fresh prawn tempura and tuna tartare.