My Sydney Trip – Japanese Bites!

Posted by angie on Aug 7, 2008 in australia, review, sydney | 2 comments

Japanese Food in Sydney’s Chinatown

My first random bite was a Japanese restaurant in Chinatown that my cousin (JH) took me too. JH wanted to take me to some really nice sushi that he had been to within the last week, but after walking around lost for about 30 minutes and not asking for directions (typical males!) we decided to drop by a ramen shop in Chinatown near Paddy’s Markets that he had been wanting to visit for a while but had never gotten around to it. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the name of the ramen shop but it’s supposed to be near a place that sells Chinese-style beef jerky.

This small ramen shop had a really cool but minimalistic feel to it (probably because the shop was quite tiny) where there were 2 communal tables where people could eat.

After scouring the menu, I decided to try the item that looked the healthiest – Healthy Yaki Soba ($9.50) and my cousin went for gyoza and Chicken Ramen. We noticed on their menu that there was a giant ramen dish that they were trying to promote, which was 1kg of ramen noodles. Their ordinary dish of ramen noodles was about 200-300g. If you managed to eat the whole 1kg within a certain time frame (I think it was 30 minutes) you would get your meal for free. I wonder if any one has tried this gimmick before and succeeded in eating the 1kg ramen in half an hour!

Gyoza is a Japanese-style dumpling. Actually I can’t really tell the difference between the Chinese-style dumplings that look like gyoza, and the real gyoza. The gyoza wrapper was slightly burned, and the meat filling was.. well, average I guess. It made me wonder whether they had actually made the gyoza in-store, or whether they had purchased it.

But the gyoza was actually ok, compared with my Healthy Yaki Soba which was described as being yaki soba with bonito (fish flakes) and vegetables. I chose the healthiest option because of the indulgent foods that I had been having at World Youth Day, but choosing healthy turned out to be my downfall. The yaki soba reminded me of a few packets of instant noodles in terms of both their look and taste. JH commented that I probably should have gone for something less healthy.

My cousin’s Chicken Ramen was ok – or so he said. As we were talking, I noticed that his soup was forming a thick layer, similar to when you put soup into the fridge. It was so gross that you could even see the soup curdling in front of your eyes. I didn’t take a photo of it though… in hindsight I think I should have just to show how bad it was.

Disappointed, we left the ramen corner shop and did not look back.

Later on in the week, I told maguro how disappointed I was about this ramen shop. Maguro, being the fan of all things Japanese, had also visited a sushi bar which she pointed out to me while we were walking around town. Surprisingly, she has decided to swear off eating Japanese food in Chinatown because our experiences combined (plus other factors, I suppose) have turned her off from doing so.

So there you have it – Japanese food in Sydney’s Chinatown bites!