Yoshii
115 Harrington St
The Rocks, NSW 2000
$$$$$

Yoshii is one of the participating restaurants for October’s Good Food Month “Let’s Do Lunch!” $35pp specials. It’s literally 2mins walk from work and I’ve often walked past and wondered what it was like, since I’d heard good things about this award-winning restaurant. Our team of 7 went there for lunch today, to my delight. It’s surprisingly small, but with really classy yet cosy decor. We were lucky to score the ‘special room’, which we got when I requested for “the nicest table because it’s a celebration, please!”. The waitresses are Japanese and super sweet, giggling at me when I proudly said one of the few Japanese phrases I know, “arigato guziamas” (okay I have NO idea how to spell that!) to thank them after they filled our wine glasses. Food came out swiftly and we were fortunate they weren’t crowded, so we weren’t rushed as we had our meal.

So onto the food. We had the Slow-roasted White Miso Wagyu and Black Miso Wagyu Beef, served with Rice and Miso Soup and matching Rose Wine. All of us were mildly amused at the individual menus (fancily tucked into their own envelopes) were pulled out with a flourish and the menu placed in front of us. Amused because since we were doing the “Let’s Do Lunch” special, there was only ONE set menu.. 😛 Anyway, they specialise in Wagyu beef and today we each had 2 ‘logs’ of the fat-marbled beef, one topped with White Miso, and one topped with Black Miso. The Miso flavour was delicate and really lovely on the palate – the White was milder and slightly sweet, the Black stronger and smoother. I preferred the Black. The beef was noticably soft and tender, meltingly so. However, my complaint was that strangely, there was something like a thin tendon (or something like that) through mine, which meant the beef mostly melted in my mouth but left a tiny bit left to chew, and chew, and chew, and chew. No one else seemed to notice that and finished quickly, so maybe it was just my beef that lucked out. Or maybe I just have a weak jaw.

The Japanese rice was a welcome side dish for a carboholic like myself, and the Miso soup was beautiful and mild with small bits of silken tofu and seaweed. The Rose Wine (forgot the actual name) was really lovely and went well with the beef. It’s a lovely restaurant but fairly pricey IMHO. I’d go back if they slashed all their prices by half 😛

Yoshii Japanese Restaurant

Delicious beer

Slow-roasted White Miso Wagyu and Black Miso Wagyu Beef

Japanese Rice and Miso Soup

Rose Wine