Kobe Jones (Good Food Month), King Street Wharf

It’s that time of the year again – our favourite month of the year…Good Food Month!! This year, the restaurants at King Street Wharf have some special offers for Good Food Month and at Kobe Jones, they’re serving up a Sake Tasting Platter which pairs 4 types of Japanese sake with bite sized nibbles from their menu for $39.50 per person.

The platter is appetiser sized, arranged with 45ml shots of cold sake neatly lined up behind the corresponding mini dish they have been paired with their complementary flavours in mind.

Sake Tasting Platter, $39.50 

We start from the left, with the intricately arranged Lollipop Sushi which features a thinly peeled cucumber encasing cubes of fresh tuna, kingfish and salmon sashimi, a tasty crab salad, asparagus, smelt roe, all skewered on a stick and drizzled with a soy sauce vinaigrette. It’s paired with a Miyamizu Sake from the Uozaki area of Noda, which was quite a dry sake with crisp notes. We sip the sake (don’t shot it!) between bites of the dish to see how the sake changes the flavour of the dish and vice versa.

Next up is the Wagyu Tataki, with 3 thin slivers of marbled wagyu tenderloin lightly seared on the outside while retaining a chewy, rare texture in the middle. The tataki is served chilled, along with a ginger sesame ponzu and some shaved onion on top for an extra flavour hit. The tataki is also resting on a bed of sesame seaweed salad which was quite tasty. I found the Kobesakara Sake which went with this dish to also be quite dry at first, but it had a smoother finish than the first sake. It’s said to be the best sake to have with beef and I can see why – the sake became easier on the palate as I made my way through the beef, getting smoother with each bite and each subsequent sip of the sake.

My favourite pairing was the Scallop Carpaccio with the Yuzushu Sake, as the sake was a delicious, refreshing blend of yuzu juice (a Japanese citrus fruit) which didn’t taste particularly alcoholic. The sake hails from the Nara region and went nicely with the juicy, raw scallops, which had been flamed with white truffle oil (although the truffle notes weren’t that apparent) and drizzled with a strong wasabi pepper sauce and balsamic syrup.

Lastly, we had the Aburi Tuna which was a lightly seared tuna nigiri with a tiny dollop of intensely flavoured miso on top and some shaved onions again. It was paired with a sweet Oubai Umeshu Sake also from the Nara Region, which tastes a lot like choya plum wine from Korea, but even sweeter, with more cherry notes.

For the mains, we picked one of the Kobe Rolls we hadn’t tried before on our numerous previous visits, as we love the strong flavours and addictive sauces they smother their rolls with. The Lava Roll we picked didn’t disappoint and lived up to its H4 rating on the Kobe Jones spiciness scale of 1 to 4 – it was spicy (in a good way), with the creamy chilli sauce coating the steamed lobster meat and crab salad roll leaving us with a tingling heat on our tongues.

Lava Roll, $45.99

Our other main was the classic Japanese fusion dish of Marinated Cod Saikyo Miso Yaki. The rendition at Kobe Jones isn’t as intensely flavoured as some others we have tried and the cod itself was softer than expected, probably due to the fact that it is first steamed then baked. It’s served with a zesty yuzu butter and pickled vegetables for a sour hit.

Marinated Cod Saikyo Miso Yaki, $31.00

A meal at Kobe Jones is always a treat – they have been around for a while and know how to execute fusion Japanese flavours well, particularly with their addictive sushi rolls. You do pay a premium for a meal here, but it’s worth the splurge every once in a while for that stunning view of Darling Harbour.

Visit the King Street Wharf website for more info on their Good Food Month specials.

Excuse Me Waiter dined as guests of Kobe Jones

Kobe Jones
29 Lime Street, Sydney NSW 2000
Ph: (02) 9299 5290

Kobe Jones on Urbanspoon

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