In the same shopping arcade as my new favourite place for udon, Menya Mappen, there are a bunch of other food places serving traditional Japanese fare with the same self-serve system. Directly next to Menya Mappen is Oiden Bowl Bar whose menu focuses on rice bowl dishes.
2015
The first items on their menu involve raw salmon. They’re described as ‘raw minced salmon belly, flying fish row (sic), dried seaweed and egg yolk powder on rice’ ($8.50 for large). The addition of an ontama (half boiled egg) (+$1.00) is the only difference between them.
N and I had second thoughts on the minced salmon when readings the description, but then the photo of the dish on the menu showed diced small cubes of salmon so we decided to try it anyway. Unfortunately, not true to their photo, the salmon came out almost minced beyond recognition (other than its telltale pinky colour). It had the texture of baby food (i.e., none) and tasted bland. The addition of wasabi brought out some of the salmon flavours but without any texture in the salmon, the roe only made the rice bowl more mushy. The egg was soft-boiled but a taken a tad too far so was left with a gooey, rather than slightly oozy centre. Perhaps that was for the best, ‘cause the oozy egg yolk would have made the rice bowl too much like baby food.
To go with my rice bowl, I chose a beef and potato croquette. I had high hopes for something tasty, but it seems like they made the croquette by putting beef, potato and onion into a food processor (maybe the same one they put the salmon through?!), blending into oblivion, and then deep frying slabs of it. The result is a single coloured brown mash that’s also the texture of baby food. Texture issues aside, the flavouring was decent.
While I won’t be in any rush to return to Oiden, they do seem to be rather busy during lunch hour so perhaps their BBQ beef bowls fare better.
2017
Our rice bowl cravings not satisfied the week earlier by Rice Workshop, T and N joined me at Oiden Bowl Bar.
N and I had previously tried their Ontama Salmon bowl to great disappointment, so we returned this time to try the more signature rice bowls on their menu.
This is the CHO (Curry, Hashed Beef, Ontama) combo ($8.90), a rice bowl with ‘homemade Japanese curry, Japanese style hashed beef, and half boiled egg and coleslaw. It’s perfect when you want to try both the Japanaese Curry Rice or the Japanese Style Hashed Beef Rice. And especially so here, when they divide the bowl into thirds so the sauces don’t mingle.
Hayashi rice is a thick-demi-glace sauce made from red wine and tomato sauce and containing beef, onions, and button mushrooms that’s served with steamed rice. Here, it had a pleasant sweetness and slight acidity, recalling a mellow BBQ and tomato sauce. Japanese curry is sweet with little heat, and here, the curry flavour was spot on but without heat. I’d have appreciated a slight heat with some hunks of potato. The egg was beautifully runny, although cold, and the coleslaw added some freshness, although I could’ve gone without.
And these were the Beef Croquette ($2.50) (left) and Curry Croquette ($2.50) (right), which T and I shared. The bits of beef mince in the potato mash of the beef croquette added texture, while the flavour of curry in the curry croquette was very faint compared to the taste of the curry with the rice. Both were warm with a crispy crumb.
T tried the Ontama BBQ Wagyu Beef ($10.90), a rice bowl with grilled sliced wagyu beef, original BBQ sauce, coleslaw, sesame seeds, pickled ginger and half boiled egg. He enjoyed the smoky flavour and the fatty bits of the grilled beef immensely, although he preferred the (not cold) half boiled eggs at Mappen Noodle Bar next door.
If Skyview Plaza was any closer to my workplace, Oiden Bowl Bar and Menya Mappen would be regular haunts for their deliciously comforting Japanese food.
Oiden underwent renovations in early 2017. Many of the walls previously collaged with illustrations of women from mid-20th-century magazines were replaced with patterned and coloured tiles. The result is a much brighter space.
The format of the restaurant is the same, though, with you placing your order place at one end, picking up any side dishes of choice in the middle, before paying at the opposite end of the counter.
At the end of a gruelling few months at work, I settled in for some comfort food with Ontama Hashed Beef ($6.90 for regular) with ‘plain hashed beef with rice and half boiled egg’. Hashed beef and curry rice are two of my favourite Japanese comfort foods.
The remodel has seen Oiden replace its deeper bowls with more shallow plates. The result is the appearance of more food with the downside that you end up pushing the rice and sauce around the place as it’s more difficult to spoon rice on a plate. The heat from the sauce cooked the soft boiled egg further, but that gripe aside, the flavour was deliciously comforting like meaty tomato sauce, but not quite so tangy as barbeque sauce. The pickled daikon added crunchy pops of texture to the softness of everything else.
Oiden Bowl Bar is located at 12 /537-551 George Street, Sydney NSW 2000.