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With a luxe dining room that looks like it’s straight out of Bladerunner, the precise cooking at Garaku rises to meet its location.
Japanese$$$$
The Good Food Guide doesn’t have a Bathroom of the Year award, but if it did, there would be some contenders. The stalls painted with flowers, rainbows and tripping farm animals by Timothy Vernon Moore at Corner 75. The marble-floored loos flanked by blood-red tiles at The Grill. And now Garaku’s, the walls wrapped with embroidery whipping through Japan’s cityscapes, dotted with anime characters and yokai and illuminated by downlighting.
Bathrooms aren’t make or break for a restaurant, but they can immerse you just a little more deeply. At Garaku, the most premium of six venues slotted into three levels making up Prefecture 48 (Japan has 47 prefectures; “P48” plays off being one more), the bathrooms say this is a place that cares about detail, about art, but still knows how to have a good time.
As guiding principles, those are pretty promising. But don’t go to Garaku for the bathrooms. Go because it’s one of Sydney’s most impressive openings of the past 12 months, fine-tuned for a few tables each night and a handful of ringside guests who have tickets to a precisely executed menu from chef Derek Kim.
Fluttery sheets of tofu skin, for instance, floating in a crystal bowl resembling a lotus flower and concealing picked king crab in warm dashi: a world of restraint, an exploration of texture. The raw fish course brings the deep reds of bluefin tuna and salt-baked beetroot together, lifts them with buttermilk and finger lime, then tops them with elk and nasturtium leaves like fresh shoots breaking through soil in spring.
Garaku is part of the Azabu Group, who also run the very good Choji Yakinuku and shabu shabu specialist Hanasuki in Chatswood, and it sent out an overproduced press release when the restaurant opened last October: “It’s cooking as performance art”, “an investment in luxury”, “an unforgettable culinary journey”. Garaku is named for gagaku, by the way, the imperial court music performed during Japan’s Heian period
The TLDR is that Garaku specialises in kaiseki dining, a seasonal procession of dishes whose cues have over the past 15 years infiltrated almost every top kitchen. The beats are familiar, but thankfully this isn’t theatre to the level of Alinea in Chicago, with its apple-flavoured helium balloons floating around. Yes, a program accompanying the menu presents like a Playbill, but instead of being overkill, it’s actually kind of cute. If you would like to know that the crab course draws on Kyoto’s temple cuisine, that the tuna and beetroot dish represents the meeting of land and sea in Wakayama, or what sous-chef Sean’s favourite moment of service is (spoiler alert: it’s watching your first bite), it’s all there.
If Garaku is earnest on paper, on the plate it’s detailed, precise. Imperador, a fish often served raw, is grilled over coals, sliced and stood up on sorrel-flecked dashi cream dotted with salmon roe. Takeda Ten wagyu rib-eye is bright pink and buttery, served with mushrooms slow-cooked in kelp oil and a crisp nest made from salsify.
Kim cooked at Tetsuya’s for nine years, serving as executive chef before it closed, which if nothing else means his knife skills would score close to a 10 on the Instagram account Rate My Chives. But his food has that same quality of poise and balance as Tetsusya’s, and the fact that many chefs followed him from the restaurant means things flow smoothly. Tets never presented a snack course like Kim’s, though, a winter Zen garden decorated with autumn leaves and budding blossoms. Of the four bites, it’s the folds of raw snapper with ponzu jelly and a Japanese pumpkin tart capped with shingled zucchini cut into a perfect circle (Sean’s nemesis, apparently) that speak most clearly.
This is heads-down, tweezered cooking, but then if you have the chance to add the $25 shokuji course after mains (and a very impressive koji-brushed marron), it runs in another direction, with Kim lifting the lid on a claypot to reveal rich and aromatic kombu-scented rice topped with crisp mushrooms, a fat octopus tentacle and salmon roe. Worried about leaving a degustation feeling unsatisfied? Kim sees you. Desserts, meanwhile, are clean and fresh, if a little safe.
This isn’t performance art, but there’s theatre to it. A dark quartzite counter fronting a spotless kitchen is the stage, backlit by a pixel-panel artwork flushing blue and pink and gold by spatial designer Hiroto Yoshizoe. For drinks, the depth of the crystal bowl is mirrored in a low-cut martini glass, sloshing around a shock-cold stir-down of Roku gin, sake and Lillet Blanc finished with your choice of Japanese bitters (try umami or cherry blossom).
Sommelier Tanya Nhuen mixes that cocktail and is just as adept at recommending junmai sake, South African chenin and Mac Forbes chardonnay. Her pairings, which might include warm and cold sake or Canary Island wines, look like a thrilling ride, too. Keen to see the bathroom? Drink deep.
The low-down
Atmosphere: Spotlit black and chrome shrine lit by Bladerunner-esque neon
Go-to dishes: Sakizuke of yuba, king crab, fioretto and tsuyu dashi; Japanese pumpkin, salmon and zucchini tart; claypot rice with ikura, crispy mushrooms, ebi and octopus
Drinks: Chablis, Burgundy and rare sake, backed by plenty of astute and astutely priced local drops
Cost: $229 for seven courses, or $330 for 10 courses, per person
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
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