Koyo | SA Weekend restaurant review

The duo behind a new Prospect restaurant is determined to break a few rules – as you’ll discover upon biting into brilliant grilled skewers and an inspired pumpkin snack.

A table of food at Koyo restaurant, Prospect.

So you want to open a restaurant for the very first time. Wise heads would no doubt suggest that you follow an established template for the food, start small and play it safe with the decor. Neutral tones, blonde timber and bland artwork.

Kelly Phuong and Ryan Tan are having none of that. Walk into their restaurant Koyo and what will grab you first is the colour. Shades of mauve, apricot and dusky pink on the walls. Upholstery the deep red of velvety old-world rose petals.

Then there is the curved, art-deco-ish lines that are echoed through a sweeping central banquette and the arched niches used to keep bottles behind a long bar with its own rounded corners. And the stripped-back ceiling that exposes the building’s ducting and other inner workings, the whole lot sprayed in white.

Dining space at Koyo restaurant, Prospect

Roasted half chicken with charred peppers and coriander buttermilk at Koyo, Prospect

When it comes to the cooking, business partners Phuong and Tan (the head chef) are determined to break a few rules as well.

After meeting when both worked in the same Japanese restaurant, they began talking about the Asian-fusion places they had visited interstate and the gap they saw in the market here. All this has come together in Koyo, a few blocks on from the cinema and next to the local library on Prospect Rd.

On a particularly wet and miserable winter’s night, close to half the seats are filled, not a bad result given the scale of this venture. Still, the dimensions of the room make it difficult to build too much of a buzz and some way to divide the space might be an idea for the future.

At least a well-chosen playlist of acoustic covers keeps the mood upbeat as does the warm smile of its creator, Phuong’s sister, who is looking after our table. She leads us through a menu that begins with a strong hand of affordable snack-sized plates and “robatayaki” (or barbecued) skewers. A set-piece chef’s menu incorporating small and large plates, as well as dessert, makes sense at $70.

The starting point for the cooking is Japanese but alongside all the soy and shiitake and dashi are plenty of additional elements you are unlikely to find in Tokyo. Saltbush crunch, for instance. Or truffled yeast emulsion. Or fetta and maple syrup.

Those last two are the keys to an inspired teaming of slices of pumpkin encased in a smashing tempura batter and drizzled with the syrup that has been spiked with a bold sprinkling of two types of dried chilli. The cheese is underneath, whipped into a creamy emulsion that makes everything sing.

A baby-sized brioche bun loaded with blue swimmer crab bound in a “Japanese tartare” spiked with gribiche-style egg and salted daikon is topped with a blob of black tobiko (flying fish roe). From the raw bar, hand-cut Wagyu beef is mixed with filaments of nori, salted egg yolk and mustard greens that take the place of the usual pickles. All this is concealed beneath a stack of potato twigs that look like a campfire ready for a match.

Tempura pumpkin with spicy maple syrup and creamed fetta at Koyo, Prospect.

Skewers of chicken mince (left) and spicy lamb with coriander buttermilk at Koyo, Prospect.

Two styles of skewers are both brilliant. The “tsukune” meatballs are soft little pillows of chicken mince coated in a more-ish glaze.

And the stick of grilled lamb cubes has been rubbed with a coriander/chilli/paprika mix inspired by northern China and is bathed in a buttermilk dressing that both mellows the spice and cuts through any lamb fattiness.

A larger serve of salmon fillet in a sauce of roasted tomato and dashi stock is, for mine, a bridge too far. That sauce triggers unfortunate memories of commercial soup and doesn’t gel with the salmon’s richness.

Dessert is a hybrid of fried ice-cream and banoffee pie, with the usual fried sphere filled with a frozen blend of coconut milk and roasted banana.

A miso salted caramel puddle and candied peanuts complete a vegan combination that is every bit as overboard as it sounds. Clearly, playing it safe is not on Koyo’s agenda.

For more reviews visit delicious.com.au/eatout