The Yayoi in Chatswood celebrated two years of being open in early November 2018 with 30% off the total bill, just in time for a tasty birthday lunch.
This is the Unagi Hitsumabushi Teishoku (top, 2019, $26.00; bottom, 2023, $28.00), a ‘set meal that lets you enjoy a variety of ways to savor the delicious flavour of the eel’.
Hitsumabushi is a dish local to Nagoya that’s said to have originated at the end of the Meiji era as waitresses dished up each serving of chopped grilled eel on rice from a large wooden tub for keeping cooked rice (o-hitsu) into individual bowls for customers in a tatami-mat room
There’s an order to eating the eel for best enjoyment with the flavour changing in taste at each step.
- The whole eel dish is divided into four portions.
- The first portion is scooped into a separate bowl and enjoyed as is on a bed of rice sprinkled with thin slices of nori and egg.
- The second portion is scooped into the same bowl and enjoyed with condiments. Here, wasabi, chopped green onions and sansho.
- The third portion is scooped into the same bowl and enjoyed with the same condiments and the dashi broth is poured over it, like ochazuke.
- The final portion is scooped into the same bowl and enjoyed in the favourite of the three above methods.
For me, the third method was my favourite as all the flavours complemented each other while being easy to eat: the caramelised smokiness of the eel came through along with the savoury notes from the nori and egg, while the sansho added a fragrant flavour and tongue-tingling sensation and wasabi added a sinus-clearing heat, all with the ease of an ochazuke so each bite went down easy. The short-grain rice kept its integrity so there was nothing even akin to a congee-like result.
For D, this is the Unagi Mix Toji Teishouku (top, 2019, $26.00; bottom, 2023, $27.00), a ‘pork cutlet, deep-fried prawn and eel topped with egg set meal’. This seemed to be a new item on their menu that doesn’t yet feature in their physical menus, just the ordering screens. It swaps out the wagyu beef in its usual mix toji teishoku for slices of eel.
D enjoyed his mix of protein, delighting in the quintessential flavours of the dish that reminded him of Japan. H wasn’t a fan of the general sogginess of the deep-fried crumbing for the pork and prawn and would’ve preferred the smokiness of grilled unagi, but that’s down to the nature of the dish. That aside, he enjoyed the addition of the pickles in 2023, which offered a hint of yuzu and would’ve enjoyed a bigger portion.
Perhaps it’s a testament to omotenashi (Japanese customer service) that even while offering 30% off our total bill, the attentiveness of the staff and the quality and quantity of the food did not waver. It makes sense to offer your best, as the restaurant will gain new customers and earn current customers’ loyalty from these events.
Yayoi is located at 38 Albert Ave, Chatswood NSW 2067.