Kobe Jones – Sydney
Cuisine: Japanese

www.kobejones.com.au

29 Lime Street
King Street Wharf, Sydney

Ph: 02 9299 5290

I have been with my Mr Monky now for five whole years and we’ll be getting married in August. So this is a super special five year anniversary post.

I spent a lot of time researching where to have our anniversary dinner before our trip to Sydney. There were of course the big names in Sydney dining such as Tetsuyas, but we decided to save some money so we could hire a nice car for the whole weekend. But spending less money never means we’re eating anything less delicious and we were certainly not disappointed with our meal at Kobe Jones.

This lovely Japanese restaurant sits facing King Street Wharf in Sydney. Even if you do not sit out on the balcony, you get just as lovely a view from inside. It didn’t take us long to decide on having the “Perfect for 2″ degustation style menu for $95 per person.

While waiting for our first course I ordered a very tasty cocktail. It was fruity and refreshing, but I have been a bad food blogger and forgotten what it was called. I’m almost certain it had sunset in the title.. but as always I get distracted by the food.

First up is the Number One Special. A crab salad with avocado wrapped in a piece of seaweed and then a very thin slice of snapper and baked with Kobe Jones secret sauce. The outer part is a cheese layer. This was so tasty and we noticed that a lot of other diners were ordering the same thing. It was a bit like a big sushi but with no rice. Oh I want more!

Next up was the Kobe Jones’s Flavour Sixophony.

In this shot glass is salmon in ponzu jelly. This was probably my least favourite of everything I ate that night. It was a very strange texture for something salty and fishy and I am still trying to warm to very fishy flavours.

Then there were the two pieces of sushi, one called the Caterpillar (unagi, crab salad, cucumber with avocado on top) and the other an Alaskan crab sushi.

There was also the Lollypop sushi, which is tuna, snapper, salmon, crab salad, asparagus and smelt roe wrapped in a thinly peeled cucumber with a soy sauce vinaigrette. This was so nice, the fish pieces were extra fresh and I had no problem eating them being new to the world of sashimi.

Another of the sixophony was the Seafood Poke which was Hawaiian style sashimi cubes marinated in poke sauce. Again the fish was very fresh and the poke sauce had a nice sesame oil flavour. I loved this one and could definitely have eaten more.

Last but not least was the T&T or succulent cherry tomato filled with Kobe Jones’s special salad topped with a tangy stick of beef, tataki style. Definitely ate this one too quickly, wish it could have lasted longer!

Next we had the Carpaccio Scallop which was scallop sashimi seared and drizzled with wasabi dressing. We kind of found out the hard way that it was wasabi dressing, but after the first one we were able to be a bit more conservative with it. So succulent!

Next was a mouth watering Miso Citrus Lobster Tail, a grilled green lobster tail served in a miso citrus sauce on a bed of steamed vegetables and wafu thermidor sauce. I could have licked the plate clean I loved the sauce so much. The lobster was perfectly cooked and there was much of it. You may have to fight over the last piece. Hopefully your partner loves you more.

Next up was a palate refresher, a small scoop of black sesame ice-cream. I love black sesame ice-cream and this had a very real flavour to it, and you could even feel the texture from the crushed sesame seeds.

Our next course was very exciting, as it was the Tajima Wagyu, served on a hot rock plate with mushrooms and dipping sauce. The beautiful wagyu comes out in raw cubes and your waiter rubs a piece of wagyu fat over the plate to season it. It is then up to you to cook your wagyu just the way you like it. There were two sauces to go with the meat, one with miso and again I wish I took the time to remember what the second was instead of mentally yelling at the wagyu to cook faster so I could eat it. I don’t think it would have mattered how long we cooked the wagyu for, it would still have been tender and tasty.

Lastly was the Ama Ozen, or in English, a big platter with a silly but welcomed number of desserts on it.

There was a macaroon, I think either raspberry or cherry, or some kind of berry at least, topped with a liqueur soaked cherry and a piece of gold leaf. Then there was the strawberry pieces and cream topped with a nutty, sweet kind of fairy floss. There was the mini creme brulee which tasted like a little vanilla pudding. The green tea tiramisu topped with a piece of chocolate. Two long sticks of chocolate.

Two pieces of cheese cake dressed with fruit to look like sushi. One was topped with strawberry, the other with mango.

This dinner was so filling, but so enjoyable. And we did not have to wait very long for the food to start arriving at our table. The restaurant does seem to get busy on a Friday night, but lucky for us Brisbanites we seem to eat earlier than others and we managed to beat the crowd. Booking certainly helped and I recommend you do this if you plan to visit. Afterwards we took a nice walk back along the wharf and crossed the footbridge to the other side of the water. Awww, how romantic!