I have been itching to indulge my taste buds for quite some time and every time a fellow foodie mentioned Sake and how wonderful / fantastic / sensational it was, I would squirm uncomfortably on my seat and make a mental note: Must. Visit. Soon.
Finally the stars aligned and my evening was locked in and it was all and more that I had been encouraged to expect.
Sake is located upstairs at the Eagle Street Pier. Ambience exudes from every Japanese influenced corner. The venue is spaciously segregated into various dining nooks, depending on how you would prefer to dine… intimately at a table, in view of the kitchen at the servery, on a group table or in a private banqueted room, or group tearoom style areas, or get there early and spend some time at the bar.
The menu unfolds like a road map and is almost as difficult to navigate… so many choices… good choices… no, great choices… sashimi, sushi, as you would expect. That was not where my problem lay; it was all of the other choices that I was finding difficult to narrow down.
We decided to share all of our choices, which is encouraged anyway.
There was one tiny other hurdle to navigate around and that was that my cherry babe has an allergy that restricted our choices somewhat, but I always like seeing how staff handle this – no problem at all. The menu is fairly well defined but there was one dish that we had selected that we had to rethink when the chef advised us it might be a concern, but other than that the wait staff couldn’t have made it more simple.
So of course, we started with some edamame… just because we could. Then came the salmon and tuna baby tacos and the beef tataki. The baby tacos didn’t sound very Japanese at all… but add the Kozaemon Junmai sake shots and the divine freshness of the salmon and tuna sashimi and I wasn’t about to trifle over trivialities.
The beef tataki were seared slivers of tenderloin scattered with garlic chippies and snowpea shoots, the beef given extra flavour by a light and delicious tataki sauce.
The Hiramasa kingfish jalapeño was sensational, the combination of the quite firm fleshed sashimi kingfish and shaved jalapeño an unexpected favourite. It only just beat the Ikura scallops topped with salmon caviar and ponzu sauce, which I had pre-empted would be my overall favourite.
For our mains we chose the Õra king salmon and buta no kukuni – both were wonderful. The salmon was perfectly jelly and topped with earthy, lightly sautéed mushrooms, the pork belly in the buta no kukuni mouth-wateringly tender and the daikon radish taking on the incredible flavours of it’s broth. The 64˚C hens egg a novel addition. All washed down with Sapporo Lager (it’s the brew babe in me…).
Now I can’t remember the name of the dessert… sorry… but hopefully it will suffice to say that it was sensational… like, I mean SENSATIONAL… divine, decadent… or I could break it down even further and say that it was incredibly yum. It was a crème brulee of sorts with a magnificently sweet but tart strawberry coulis and feather light strawberry sorbet. I should have paid more attention to what it actually said on the menu… but I was somewhat distracted… anyway… it was good (as in GOOD).
So not only did the stars align, but the dishes sparkled like diamonds on our tastebuds and I look forward to those same stars aligning again sometime soon.
For more information visit:
Sake Restaurant & Bar
Level 1/45 Eagle St, Brisbane QLD 4000
07 3015 0557
www.sakerestaurant.com.au/brisbane
This story was written by Petra Frieser – Pebbles + Pomegranate Seeds. Petra’s visit was paid for and unannounced.
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