OMAKAAAAAA(SE)

Omakase at Sashimi Shinsengumi 

Last week I had the privilege of experiencing omakase by Chef Matsui at his sashimi takeaway shop by day and private omakase restaurant by night.

Every one or two months, the phone lines open for an hour or so for bookings to be made. After calling several hundred times that night, I was unable to even get through to voicemail however my friend did and graciously invited me to attend. If that is not friendship, I don’t know what is.

Now I don’t even know most of the fishes I ate that night but all I can say is that it was a night of total bliss. $70 was actually a bargain for the 18 courses we had that night. Matsui was an excellent chef and super attentive to detail. Everything he created was so fresh, so fragrant, so delicious. It was arguably the best sushi/sashimi experience I had in Sydney and really reminded my friends of Daiwa at Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo (hah – iIve never been).

The highlights for me was definitely the aburi, we had a fair few aburi pieces that night and there were all top notch. I am passionate about aburi and Matsui served up some amazing aburi. Another highlight was the uni, or as my friend likes to call it ‘ocean butter’. It was creamy and rich and satisfying to the core. The otoro was also phenomenal, as was the homemade miso soup. You could really taste the seafood broth base in the soup. Not to mention, the scampi and the cuttlefish. Lastly, the rice, each individual grain had bite and texture, and was such a good compliment to the seafood. Hah, does it sound like I mentioned everything, well to be fair, everything was excellent. Not a fault. My night with Matsui was phenomenal and it was really a life changing experience. Omaka…se indeed.

If you made it this far sorry I didn’t get all the names of the fishes. There were just too many. Also the above was not the order it was served in.