By day, Hiyori serves set-menu teishoku lunches. After dark, it switches to a value-packed a la carte menu featuring smart contemporary Japanese cooking.
Japanese$$
Pop quiz. What is The Bradshaw? Is it a variant of the Cosmopolitan cocktail – as popularised by Sex in The City – that swaps out the standard issue cranberry juice for richer blackcurrant juice? Is it the nickname for the Brisbane Lions’ fairest and best award? Or Is it name of a large French herding dog?
The answer, of course, is none of the above.
I also, of course, suspect dialled-in readers guessed that and quickly saw through my flimsy Balderdash-style ruse.
How many readers, however, have visited The Bradshaw: an apartment development in Manning? If so, you’re doing better than me.
Although this area has featured throughout my life – my first job was at OBriens Clothing Co – it was only this month that I learned that there were residential tenants living among the commercial tenants here.
The catalyst for this discovery was Hiyori: an urbane Japanese restaurant that opened in The Bradshaw last November.
While Japanese food is well-established in WA – see supermarket shelves everywhere stocked with soy sauce and takeaway California rolls – Hiyori still manages to bring new ideas to the party.
The space, for starters, is no izakaya-by-numbers snoozefest or Temu Nobu knock-off. Those approaching via the Manning Laneway will be greeted by windows dressed with pale linen curtains, ornate lamp shades, a wabi-sabi arrangement of stones, and more empty space than probably makes sense in the current economical climate.
Juliana Koh, the restaurant’s Singaporean-born owner, might have done marketing for a living, but architecture and design are her passions and it shows.
Neatly stacked chirori sake flasks line the shelves; the bevelled circular plates are Robert Gordon; the plywood chairs are locally made using the Japanese wood joinery technique, kigumi.
Yet despite all this design attention-to-detail, Hiyori presents as warm, not cold; somewhere to hang rather than a museum to be Instagrammed. Much of its charm comes via the cheery front-of-house: natural hosts who are easy of smile and sincere of nature. It’s tempting to chalk up this service as typically deferential Japanese, yet the approach here feels Japanese, but remastered for suburbia.
The menu, a team effort between Koh and her son Jerome Mark Amin, also demonstrates same-same-but-different thinking. Raw tuna is sluiced in a spicy mayo, then arranged on rice paper crackers of impressive load-bearing capacity: a free-spirited yet likeable interpretation of “poke tostada”. Miso butter and warming togarashi chilli lend a Japanese spin on ribs of char-grilled corn.
Fellow fried chicken junkies can choose between squares of chook skin puffed into golden crisps or midwings (shio teba) marinated in shio koji, split in two, then fried. Which is most deserving of a place on your dinner order? In the immortal (translated) words of Mia Agraviador: why not both?
Being predominantly a neighbourhood spot, Hiyori doesn’t have Kobe beef, Hokkaido sea urchin and other high-end Japanese ingredients on the menu, but nor does it have the accompanying wallet-busting prices either. So while there’s West Australian Futari wagyu on the menu, the cut is oyster: an undervalued bit of beef that’s equally suited to being thinly slice and presented raw as carpaccio as it is being char-grilled and served with a sweet miso-spiked bearnaise sauce. The cooked wagyu is also just $26 and is surely one of Perth’s biggest steak bargains.
While the yakitori isn’t quite Washokudo-good, there’s enough caramelisation and char on Hiyori’s sticks to appease grilled chicken fans. Skip the generic-tasting sake clams in favour of the shimesaba: vinegary cured mackerel (not made in-house but imported from Japan) teamed with a ginger oil that conjures memories of Hainanese chicken rice. Desserts and a tight drinks list – another study in east meeting west – keep the focus on value right to the finish.
While I haven’t road-tested every neighbourhood Japanese restaurant in Perth, I like to think that I’ve experienced enough Japanese meals to confidently say Hiyori’s approach – and price point – feels spot-on for the suburbs.
Dinner for three with sweets and booze was less than $200. A recent solo omakase outing cost me more than that while being far less enjoyable.
Perhaps there’s a little-known address in your neck of the woods delivering bang-for-buck? I hope so. (And that you tell me about it).
But until you find your local Hiyori, a visit to The Bradshaw makes for a rewarding night out.
The low-down
Atmosphere: an urbane eatery bringing contemporary Japanese cookery and value to the inner-south
Go-to dishes: futari wagyu steak
Drinks: Japanese teas plus a small but considered selection of sake, beer and wine
Cost: about $100 for two people, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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Max Veenhuyzen is a journalist and photographer who has been writing about food, drink and travel for national and international publications for more than 20 years. He reviews restaurants for the Good Food Guide.
