I contacted a particularly plugged-in pal this week — a one-time concierge who always seems to have the town on lock — and lamented that I needed to get “over the bridge” more often.

“What bridge?” he said. “The footbridge over Parramatta Road next to Sydney Uni?”

Funny guy. But his point, that urban Sydney food writers tend to stay too close to the CBD and Surry Hills, was fair.

“Well,” I ask. “Tell me a place that is worth a ferry ride to Manly on a cold May night?”

A few hours later I’m sitting in Sunset Sabi, a little Japanese joint on Manly’s Pittwater Road that has, apparently, entranced the locals no end since it opened six months ago.

At the helm are Luke and Sean Miller (weirdly, no relation), two pals who also run the nearby Mexican joint Chica Bonita and who evidently have a knack for opening fashionable eateries with cool names.

Their head chef is Adam Burke, a Nobu-trained Japanese specialist who was lured over from Daniel San, another honky-tonk style Asian restaurant literally two blocks away (awkward!).

The move, he said, was motivated mostly by the opportunity to work up his repertoire and oversee his own kitchen with a smaller team.

“And I think a smaller venue is something that Manly needed,” he says.

“There wasn’t much on offer of what we wanted or what I wanted so I thought why not give it a go and try?”

The result is a fun riff on that whole “east meets west” Californian-Japanese (‘Cali-Jap?’) that takes in the Izakaya-style culture of small share dishes washed down with oodles of booze — in this case six different sakes (180ml to share), black Asahi (served at subzero temp), a small but very reasonably priced wine list (mostly from Europe) and some excellent cocktails.

The food is divided into starters and raw/sushi then a section called “up next” with miscellaneous things like tea-smoked trout, roasted aubergine and beef tataki.

And dishes have funny names like “tuna me on”, “slammin salmon” and “totes gyoza” because this place is young and groovy and millennial (yes, Flume was playing) and that could be lame if the food was average. But it’s “totes” not.

The edamame is reimagined as “sabimame” ($7), served hot and tossed through white truffle, chilli, orange zest and salt and is truly sublime.

A baked sushi roll called “dynamite” ($12) is that; essentially a california roll piled with grilled scallops and finished with a spiced mayo, shiso, coriander and spicy fish roe. It’s finished with the blow torch and arrives gloriously sweet, sticky and caramelised.

The best dish of our night, though, was the simplest, the perfectly grilled Angus beef fillet ($26) simply sliced and served medium rare with two condiments; chopped tomato with shiso and an insanely delicious caramel miso.

There are a couple of missteps. The caramelised eggplant ($10) is loaded with parmesan, pine nuts and chopped almonds and the flavour combination just doesn’t seem to work.

And the kingfish sashimi ($16), served in an albeit exquisite ponzu and ginger dressing, is served with lumpy chunks of avocado which should be totally done away with.

But aside from that; we drink cocktails, tear through the sake list, eat until we burst and then settle a bill that redefines the word “reasonable”.

And who in their right mind wouldn’t take a ferry for that?

Originally published on dailytelegraph.com.au