Big Stone, North Sydney

I love Japanese and Spanish food equally with a passion, but it’s easy for restaurants to get a bit muddled when it comes to fusion, especially since Japanese/Spanish cuisines are quite different. I’ve had some bad experiences with fusion cuisine but I enjoyed Big Stone’s take on it, even though there wasn’t a lot of actual fusing going on. This little restaurant is in North Sydney, tucked away from the main food courts so you really need to be in the loop to find it.

There’s the traditional Japanese style cloth banners hanging from the top of the door that spell out the name of the restaurant and the interior is neat; you can tell they’ve put some thought into the cute decorations. It’s lunchtime so we go for their tapas Tasting Platter for $16 which gives us 4 plates of our choice to share, and some soup, bread and chips too.

Menu

First up is the Sweet Corn Soup in an adorable little cup, which was milky, creamy and quite sweet. We dip a bit of the bread in it and I like how the bread gives it a bit more savouriness.

Sweet corn soup

Our chosen options for the Tasting Platter come out next and we start with the Wagyu Tataki. I’m not a fan of tataki because raw meat makes me paranoid about food poisoning but the tataki here is lightly seared, very soft and tasty so I couldn’t resist.

We have also opted for the Sashimi which comes with nice soy vinaigrette with shaved radish; it’s a bit sweet but the raw fish is fresh and delicious. The Potato Croquettes were a must order; fantastically light and crispy breadcrumbs encasing soft potato mash with some great light wasabi mayo sauce to dip it into.

Now, up to this point all the dishes have just been small portions (tapas style) of conventional Japanese dishes but lastly, we had also ordered some Chorizo which came out on a bed of caramelised onions. The chorizo was intensely flavoursome, but it was a bit of a strange experience eating it with chopsticks – I suppose that’s the meeting of East with West.

We were still hungry after these 4 tiny plates so we ordered 2 Wagyu Beef Skewers which were amazing. Juicy and tender cubes of meat which were still a bit rare on the inside, with teriyaki sauce on top and caramelised onion – you can’t really go wrong with that combo.

Wagyu beef skewers, $7.50 each

We had just enough time to fit in dessert too, so we tried their Churros (Spanish doughnuts). They were very light and crunchy while being moist on the inside, though they did taste slightly different from the other churros I’ve had elsewhere. These came with a little pot of delectable chocolate sauce, caramel and cream to dip into and the cream tastes like melted icecream.

 Churros, $12

Big Stone has attentive, friendly service from its waitstaff who continually clear the plates between each dish and it’s a comfortable restaurant in the North Sydney CBD area that I would return to. They apparently do an interesting take on paella too that I want to try out if I get the chance!

Big Stone
194 Miller Street
North Sydney, NSW 2060
Phone:  02 9956 6100