Takeru, Chatswood

Competition is pretty fierce in Chatswood for Japanese restaurants with new ones opening left, right and centre all the time. But Takeru is a little different. Tucked away in a little corner in Victoria Plaza, it offers modern Japanese food with strong Western influences - think Japanese-style pasta and pizza, as well as more traditional favourites like ramen and agedashi tofu.

It's open all day which is great for a late lunch, early dinner or afternoon snack, and prices are very reasonable with most of the dishes under the $15 mark. Today I'm here with a bunch of hungry boys for a late lunch, so as soon as we are seated in the booth we start poking away at the touch screen ordering system (which is the same as the one at Wagaya and Poporo).

Mentaiko potato salad - $7.20

The food arrives in no time, and soon the table is filled with dishes that we ordered only minutes earlier. A big dollop of creamy potato sits on a bed of lettuce leaves, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and corn kernels. The potato is mashed roughly so that there are still small chunks of potato, and the mixture is ever so slightly pink from the addition of mentaiko (cod roe).

Agedashi tofu with soft shell crab - $7.50

Poporo, Haymarket

Another pre-theatre dinner - this time Charm and I were watching the long-awaited Wicked! at Capitol Theatre and we were looking for a quick bite before the show. However, I forgot that Thursday was shopping night and that all the usual suspects around the area (Musashi, Chat Thai, Wagaya etc...) would be packed. As a last resort we went to Market City and were surprised to find a new place open which seemed to offer quick and tasty food, which is exactly what we were after.

Touchscreen Menu

 
Poporo calls itself a "Japanese modern cafe restaurant" and offers a variety of burgers, pasta, salad and rice dishes. Apart from the normal Japanese-style rice dishes such as curry rice and omelette rice, they also had something called "doria" which was "oven baked white mornay sauce and melty cheese on tomato rice". Everything was very reasonably priced hovering around the $10-15 mark. You simply placed your order at the touchscreen, paid at the counter and sat down at a table with your number. 

Spinach and cheese penne (cream sauce with bocconcini, tasty, mozzarella, parmesan and spinach) - $10.90

Sushi Rio, Sydney

My sister Charm and I are both love our sushi. We ventured out to the city one Friday afternoon for lunch and we stumbled across Sushi Rio's lunch special where all sushi was $3! With a bargain like that we couldn't resist and so we abandoned our original lunch destination to eat at Sushi Rio.


The place was quite full but luckily when we went there was no line and we were seated promptly. One thing I like about Sushi Rio's setup is that their plates are grouped into categories according to the type of seafood/meat in the sushi. So all the salmon, prawn, tuna, chicken etc has its own little section of the train preceded by a sign saying what the section is. Pretty good for those unfamiliar with their sushi.

Raw salmon onion nigiri (normally $3.00)

We started off with the salmon onion nigiri which was very fresh and zigzagged with wasabi mayo.

Grilled eel nigiri (normally $3.50)

The eel nigiri is sweet and tender - the most tender eel I've ever had I think!

Raw scallop nigiri (normally $3.50)