It’s a Tokyo izakaya reimagined food-wise, or a Nordic café doing Japanese food style-wise. Either way it’s a long, elegant lightbox of a place with polished concrete, whitewashed bricks, a smooth communal bar, and a covetable manual ice shaver in teal that has us grasping thirstily for the cocktail menu.

Like the interior, the menu is refined with a Japanese tilt. Finally, a place to stop for some gum-polishing, crunchy-but-succulent fried chicken karaage and a stellar sake-spiked negroni (just ask sommelier Charles Leong). Snack, stay for a banquet, crawl past and stop by for a green tea soft serve; Cho Cho San caters to all our frivolities.

A dish of pink cubes of yellowfin tuna with avocado and pickled eggplant is slippery, tart and creamy at once, but bypass it. Not because it’s not perfectly lovely, but because there are things on this menu that are remarkable, innovative, and not available elsewhere. There’s the giant puff of crunch on the plate that’s actually a snow crab omelette. Shredded, delicate crab is tossed with a couple of eggs and then fried so gently that the yolk bursts when you cut into this textured wisp of a dish. There’s a Japanese curry tilt to it all and it’s magnificent. We love the bravery of bringing Japanese to Sydney without sushi (just like an izakaya), nudging us to try something new.

Ex-Billy Kwong, Bodega, Rockpool chef Nic Wong heads up the kitchen, and he’s turning out teriyaki fish collars, sticky, crispy agedashi tofu and an udon noodle Japanese Bolognese that’s so umami rich we’re left wondering what the Italians have been going on about all this time. Jonathan Barthelmess and Sam Christie pop between this bright nook and The Apollo across the road, which they also own. It’s a crack team, and this place is still cracking good.

Tel: (02) 9331 6601

Social feed