Menousai Mugen

Menousai Mugen is in Bligh place just off Flinders Lane. It was a bit hard to find at first but after a few times I found it.

It is a small place but it is popular with all the bloggers on Zomato. They have two storeys (one in the basement and the other one on the ground level). The basement is a lovely place to go to.

Here they pride themselves on Ramen and ramen is not cheap to come by. Seeing as it was days after the Japanese festival I had a hankering for Japanese food and beer.

It was not busy but it did take them a while to get to me. Here I had their Wafu ramen and a pot of Thunder road beer. Being a Japanese place I would have thought that they had Japanese beer.

The ramen here was good but on the smallish side. It was slightly chewy but that was to be expected with Japanese ramen. They could have given me more than one piece of meat, broth and noodles for $18. But I suppose someone has to pay the rent on this side of the town.

But I did like the broth though. It had a lot of pork flavour in there.

If they were on Liven that would be awesome and then they could have more customers. Oh well, til next time.

Gyoza Gyoza in Melbourne Central

Gyoza Gyoza has opened up in Melbourne Central and when they had the $10 discount voucher I wanted to try the place.

I have had good food in the other Gyoza Gyoza stores so I had wanted to see. The other Gyoza Gyoza did not charge me $3.50 for pink ginger and they gave me a small pink ginger and not a big bowl.

The udon for $6.80 was small and alright. I prefer Emporium's one though.

They had a special of 5 Gyoza for $4.80 which is not too bad. Like the other place, they give out all the ginger sauce etc. But they forgot to let me choose which sauce.

The seaweed salad was nothing special. It was store bought. I needed my greens and irons to balance out the meal.

But the miso for $2.50 was very salty though. The one I get at Emporium is much better and less salty.  Its like they put too much miso stock in there.

The Agedashi tofu did wow me though. Here they were in cubes and they didn't use a lot of sauce though. It was freshly fried the way it should.

The oysters in yuzu sauce were fresh but they had too much sauce on them. The sauce drowned out the flavour. But I loved the tang from the yuzu.

Rating: 12/20-  overall disappointing. I hope that they can improve within time. 

Sushi Hub

This new Sushi Hub opened up in Hawthorn a few months ago. Unlike the city one this one does not have wine and is a small store.

Tamago sushi

Gyoza

Salmon nigiri

Ikura nigiri

Miso soup

Tempura vegetables

Here there are many varieties on offer and you can even order main meals. I had the entertainment book voucher so I went with a friend.

The bathrooms are small and are out the back.

The tamago sushi fell apart. It had that rubbery feel to it. But we enjoyed all the seafood sushi and edamame.

The gyoza was cold. It had been sitting on the train for a while.

And the ready made udon was yum. Unlike the city store this came in a huge bowl.

I have never tried the ice cream in the city store. However I really liked this one here. I loved the crunch of the cornflakes down the bottom.

Do come by for the ready made meals and seafood.

Tokyo District

This place is a new place in Midtown plaza. Here they specialise in Donburi and have a limited menu. They also have free ice cream for those that like their Facebook page.

They have many specials and this place is huge. It replaced Ramen Bankara.

Here their bentos were good but the kakkiage in the rice bowl had too much sauce added to it. The other kkkiage which I ordered on its own was just fine. The sauce was on the side and was the soy sauce and not the sweet one used for tempura.

Here they used authentic Japanese rice and the chawan mushi was quite nice. It was silky and smooth. The salad had waaay too much dressing to it.

The miso soup was the authentic Japanese sort. But it was powdered and the tofu gave it that nice touch.

Rating: 15/20- good. Do come here for authentic Japanese and service with a smile.

Ajisen Ramen in Hawthorn

Today there was another big protest at work and I wanted to stay away. It was the one about making education free.

Ajisen Ramen is a chain store and I heard some good things about it from Confessions of a little pigy and other bloggers about their good meal sets.

This store in Hawthorn was run by the Chinese.

Here they have all their meal sets under $15 with some of their premium ones for under $20. They don't come with miso soup- you have to buy it yourself. for an extra $2 per set. This miso soup was worth the $2 as it had generous amount of seaweed and other things.

I had the yasai bento and I have had better at Highpoint where there was lost of seaweed. Here they forgot the sesame seeds on the rice. The tofu for the yasai bento was a bit overcooked. It was a bit soft and it drowned in a lot of sauce.

I didn't really like the corn salad. It had waaay too much mayo in there and I could not taste the corn. The edamame was just ok.

Rating: 13/20-hmm I've had better ok. And Glenferrie has quite a few other places around.

Nabe One

Nabe one is in QV and they specialise in udon and rice dishes. They have been around for about two years now. It is run by Japanese.

The service there was fine and dandy.

Here I had their bento. It was good and the tempura was light in the oil. It did though take a while to make.

The rice was big and kept me full. The whole set was $13.90 and it included the cold (but lukewarm) tofu, rice, miso soup (it was salty) and tempura. I enjoyed the tempura sauce which was more of a fruit sauce.

The tempura prawns were big and that was good. I would have loved there to be fish in it. I did enjoy the pumpkin and other vegetables.

Do come by to Nabe One when you can.

Mutekiya

Mutekiya is a Japanese restaurant and its at 708 Glenferrie Road. Here they are run by Chinese and they don't have sushi. Rather they are a noodle and rice restaurant.

They had just been opened for three days and the flowers were outside. When I saw the flowers I thought that a new Chinese/Malaysian place had just opened but I was wrong

I was greeted by a glum waitress. It was after lunch on a Friday and here they were quiet. In fact the whole of Glenferrie Road was quiet. Originally I was going to visit Osha Thai but it turns out that they have a happy hour special of beer and meal and I wanted to try the beer.

Back to Mutekiya now. The place is clean and small. The bathrooms are through a door out the back. You have to turn right and then look right for them. They are unisex and are clean.

Here I had their bento. It was $14.95 for your choice of chicken or beef, miso soup, rice, salad, fried prawn and takoyaki. The takoyaki was terrible. It tasted more like potato balls than octopus. The fake crab salad was awful. It had that very sweet taste to it. As for the chicken teriyaki there was too much to it and after a while the chicken was very tough. Also the teriyaki sauce was too sweet.

The prawns were alright and so was the rice but who could complain. At least the rice was real Japanese ones

The miso soup was the only thing that could save the meal, but where was the tofu?

Rating: 11/20- it was just ok. I wouldn't go out of my way to get there again unless asked.

Hyakumi

Myakumi is a Japanese place in Niddrie. On this particular Saturday Niddrie was busy and Friend A wanted to catch up. Hyakumi is right next to La Porchetta which seemed quiet. Here Hyakumi was busy with Caucasians. This must be a good sign, am I right?

Nope I was wrong. The place seemed understaffed for a busy Saturday. We did have a long wait of up to 20 minutes for a basic but deluxe bento to come ($18.80 for a measly one with no rice). It was nice of them to warn us about the rice but they could have made this up with more sushi and sashimi.

The katsu was nice but there could have been more.

Image courtesy of Daniel Johnston on Zomato

There were four morsels of sushi- not enough for someone who is really hungry. There were two rolls and two nigiri. All of which are fresh and my roll fell apart. The wasabi was the lovely Japanese one.

The seaweed salad was ok though and I loved the salad under the katsu. That had that nice tang to it.

The spring roll was the frozen sort.

I really did like the tempura and would order that again even on its own along with the agedashi tofu which someone had

In short don't bother with the bento. Instead order the other dishes which seemed to be better

Ramen Bankara

This place is a Japanese chain store which has places in India and all over the world. Here the place was recommended to me by aadancefit who recently ate his ramen for free as he finished in under 15 minutes.

If you share a moment to Ramen Bankara's Facebook page or Instagram then you will get the ice cream for free. But because I did not have ramen ( I came after 3:30pm and was not in the mood for ramen)I did not get it. Rather I was in the mood for rice and pork with egg. In fact I got two eggs not knowing that there would be egg in my dish. I liked both and two eggs is sometimes good for you.

The pork was nicely cooked but as per usual there was too much rice and I had a bit of difficulty finishing this. I really liked the garlic ginger and onions on top. What I would have loved is some of that pickly ginger which is used in ramen dishes (and its pink).

The ordering system is just like any other in an Asian restaurant where you write your order on a sheet of paper and hand it over.

Service was very friendly with a smile.

Rating: 13/20- just ok. Do come here for their food and free ramen if you can finish a mega one within 15 minutes.

Sakura Kaiten Sushi II

This place is the sister of Sakura Kaiten sushi in Collins st. This place was recommended to me by aadancefit. He had been there some time ago and loved the fast moving car. They have this sort of thing in Japan.

By 2:30pm the place was busy with all the people loving a late lunch such as myself.

Here their tamago nigiri was overpriced. It was $4.80, other places charge $2.80 per plate. Here the egg was good and sweet but the rice fell apart.

Ginger

Tamago sushi

Cooked tuna sushi

 The tempura sushi was nothing much to write about. In fact I wouldn't recommend it.

But the seafood udon ($3.80 (a winter special), normally it is $6.80) which took a while to come was really great. Everything was piping hot and the noodles was fresh. In fact all the sushi and meals were made by a team of Japanese chefs.

The second time around at 3pm the place was dead quiet. This time I tried the vegetarian spring rolls, the prawn balls, agedashi tofu and the eel sushi. The eel sushi fell apart but the agedashi tofu was really good. It was ordered straight off the iPad screen. This fared much better than the one at Chadstone.

The prawn balls and the vegetarian spring rolls were cold. They had been on the train for a while so they lost their crunch.

The tuna one though was freshly made and it had some huge spicy kicks to it. I loved it.

By the way if you order 5 dishes off the iPad menu then you might win a free ice cream.

14/20- aa_dancefit it was just alright. Not the best, hump.

Tokyo Table

Here there is a new Japanese BBQ place in Glenferrie road where all the students were. We were going to go Camberwell but seeing how long the queues of cars were and the fact that we had to get replacement bus service meant that Camberwell was unviable. We also had to come back at a decent hour as someone has to work the next day.

This place is not on zomato yet and it should- but its a few doors down from Ajisen and across the road from Santoni.


We saw the big sign outside and that enticed us to go in. Inside it was warm and cozy and full of customers eating yanniku (Japanese BBQ with meat and make your own sushi- although one table could not work out what to do with theirs even though it was in the menu. So they left all their rice- what a waste).  Luckily though the waitress explained to the next table how to cook their food.

The first to come was the complimentary tea and edamame. The edamame was cut really roughly, it had some rough edges. But the tea was really nice.

My bento was just ok. It was $10.90 and it was the tonkatsu. The miso soup was really salty and much more powdery. But the tonkatsu was tender and there wasn't a lot of rice. The tonkatsu was nicely crumbed. Moreover there was a lot of the fruit sauce.

The salad was just ok. But I did like the egg in there.
The agedashi tofu came as well and it had no moving bonito. They were two big pieces. But it was drenched in sauce and dressing from the salad and the vegetables was just the same.

Rating: 13/20- it was alright for the price
Next time I would go for the yanninuku which looked like a lot of fun or a big bowl of ramen. They do have sushi rolls but the ones at the front counter looked dead.