Zen Japanese Restaurant

Life is a party and some people are not liking it – for good reason though! I guess it must end soon…. Though I do wonder, really. Why can’t life be a constant party? I write this at midnight while I am preparing for a dinner party later on at night.

On Wednesday, Jay and I joined Chinny and Cindy for a comedy at the Astor. At the last minute, we also decided to have dinner at Zen Japanese Restaurant in Subiaco. If Madam Bollinger (see her profile on urban spoon) likes it, I think there is a high chance I would like it too.

The interior suggests that this is a casual place. Probably not the kind of place you will hang out in allll night. Still, neat in typical Japanese fashion with their open plan kitchen.

Chinny and Jay try to be funny. Can you imagine that these are finance professionals? haha…

The first dish that came was the soft shell crab tempura served with wasabi mayonnaise and a small leafy salad. I really like soft shell crab so I was sold. Chinny thought the dish was on the oilier side and could do with a lot more paper towelling. Do bear in mind that Chinny is a fitness fanatic. The insides spilled out beautifully. I liked it… I have a weakness for tasty fried food.

Next was the tempura prawns. The batter could use a lot more flavour. I also prefer a fluffier, lighter tempura batter. At least the prawns are fresh.

Then the Spider roll came. This was really good (and definitely much better than Aisuru’s). It contained crunchy soft-shell crab, crunchy and fresh lettuce, seaweed that gave that depth of flavour, nicely compacted rice rolled in sesame and topped with fish roe that felt like a miniature party popping in your mouth as they burst. Mmm.

Finally, the monster of an order. We ordered a huge ship of sashimi… worth $120. I think we wiped out their sashimi inventory for that quiet Wednesday night. I think I saw a waiter put on his wet suit to go fishing. haha.

So what do we have here?

Tuna + spring onion wrapped in seaweed….

Kingfish, a lemon basket of wasabi….

Salmon, scallop (awesome) and clams….

The sashimi was the best out of all. It was all very fresh and as you know, fresh sashimi never taste fishy. What was also very surprising is that the boys never usually like tuna sashimi but they LOVED the tuna.

I think it is lovely that they gave us complimentary dessert (perhaps for ordering that much sashimi). Vanilla bean panna cotta which was ABSOLUTELY divine.. mmmm…. For a while we could not guess what it was because unlike the usual mould of panna cotta that resembled pudding (with texture as such), this was a cross between a mousse and ice cream.