Tiny Temaki Sushi joins Melbourne’s growing number of Japanese specialty venues.
Last December, I was one of 112,500 Australians who visited Japan and I’m sure the culinary offerings of this most delicious of nations were a feature of everyone’s trip. No surprise, I ate excellent food, too, including at a popular place for temaki, a style of sushi roll that sees diners given palm-sized seaweed squares, a bowl of rice, and a tray of fillings for self-assembly.
The same day I rolled cone-shaped snacks in Tokyo, Temaki Sushi opened in Little Collins Street. I stalked their Instagram. “Ooh,” I thought. “That Melbourne temaki looks better than the one I just had in Shibuya.”
The mini dishes roam from classic to a bit wacky, but they all work.
The more Australians travel to Japan, and the more Japanese come to Australia, the better the standard of Japanese food here, and the more confident we become to put our spin on it. It’s a win all round and might even save you a ticket to Tokyo.
Temaki Sushi is an intimate 10-seat restaurant, best visited solo or with one companion. The setting is poised, calm and elegant, with deep blue tones and textural tile and timber finishes. There’s jazz playing and the toasty smells of rice, crisp nori and sake.
Gorgeous glazed ceramics are handmade locally at a pottery studio in Sassafras, which is also the location of owner Allan Greenfield’s 14-hectare farm. There they grow wasabi, shiso, yuzu, persimmon and other fruits and vegetables that turn up here and at sister businesses Onigiri To Go (a few doors away) and Onigiri on Degraves Street, a sit-down place for rice balls. The team will also soon open a soba noodle bar using buckwheat they grow and mill.
Five small tables face the bar and kitchen where chef Hiroshi Uchiyama prepares set banquets. Unlike omakase or kaiseki, where dishes are made and presented for immediate consumption, the centrepiece of this $145 set meal is a colourful platter of 11 fillings for you to pile into nori sheets, or deliver to your mouth by chopstick, as you wish, and in whichever order you like.
My seasonal selection of morsels included a lotus root crisp piled with raw kingfish and garlic chips, a creamy salad of grapes and soft tofu, grilled eel over a cube of sweet omelette, steamed duck with pumpkin mash, and gingered eggplant tangled with kiwi and dressed with bonito shavings.
The mini dishes roam from classic to a bit wacky but they all work, and it’s fun to dress each with yuzu pepper paste, salted plum and wasabi as you go.
The main event is bookended by appetisers and noodles and there’s a silky, cosy mochi and red bean pudding to finish.
Temaki Sushi is a culinary choose-your-own-adventure where every road is rewarding. It’s a tasty pointer to the maturity of Melbourne’s Japanese dining scene. We still need our trips to Tokyo, but there’s joy here in between.
The low-down
Vibe: Elegant interlude
Go-to dish: Temaki (as part of a $145 set menu)
Drinks: Sake, Japanese beer and wine − including wines from Japan
Cost: $290 for two, 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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