SA Weekend restaurant review — Koomo Japanese restaurant at Crowne Plaza
A modern Japanese-ish restaurant on the tenth floor of a new CBD hotel tower will appeal to those who enjoy the high life, writes Simon Wilkinson.
SA Weekend
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Stories from ancient mythology to Dr Seuss are filled with creatures made up of different animal parts, both beautiful and bizarre. Like the hippocampus that has the head and forelegs of a horse with a dolphin’s tail. Or the horned rabbit known as a jackelope.
Koomo, a modern Japanese-ish restaurant midway up the new Crowne Plaza hotel, plays a similar trick with dessert.
Its bitzer dish starts with fried wonton wraps curled to form two cylinders that are filled with a whipped white chocolate mousse. A brown slurry of roasted pineapple flesh is pressed into the plate’s rim, rubbery jubes of long pepper jelly are scattered around and an apricot dipping sauce the colour of pumpkin soup comes in a separate ramekin. As compilations go, this one is right out there.
The Koomo experience is something of a bitzer itself, on one side refined in packaging and message, priced accordingly (a scotch fillet is $50), but big and boisterous and surprisingly laid back on the other.
Tables are full and turn over frequently on the Friday night of our visit and I’d wager that a fair percentage of the people dining are staying on site. There is certainly plenty of booze about – from a succession of iridescent cocktails at one table, to the couple who polished off two bottles of Rockford red at another. Bravo.
Koomo has laid claim to a substantial corner chunk of the hotel’s 10th floor that also has a bar, gym and pool. Floor-to-ceiling windows look out to the sweep of suburbia and distant hills that encircle the city, as well as the rooftops of some truly abysmal office buildings nearby.
According to the menu preamble, Koomo’s interior “reflects Japan’s rich history of natural materials … with contemporary details that borrow from Japanese tradition without being overtly Japanese”.
In practice that means vast amounts of blonde timber in floors and furnishings, across a room split into two by a marble-clad island bar and servery, with stools pulled up to long communal benches on one side and more formal seating on the other. Tables are set with both chopsticks and regular cutlery. The drinks list is wine-focused but sake still gets a mention.
Chef Patrick Chung grew up in Fiji and has spent many years in the kitchens of international hotels, most recently Adelaide’s InterContinental. It’s a background reflected in cooking that, like the interior, is covertly rather than overtly Japanese.
So while “Something to Start With” includes the on-trend chicken katsu sando (fried chicken sandwich) and beef tataki, it also has a pair of brioche sliders filled with blue swimmer crab bound in a mayonnaise dressing that could have been applied with a lighter hand.
Gyoza or potsticker dumplings don’t measure up to Chinatown’s finest. The steamed-then-fried wrappers are thick and leathery, as if they have been cooked earlier and kept warm, and the filling of (too) finely minced pork studded with pine nuts is dull. The lacy bit that is normally the edge of the dumpling is reinterpreted as a separate “wafer” and tastes mostly of its frying oil. A black vinegar dressing bolstered by garlic, ginger and chilli at least gives it a kiss of life.
A simple but well-executed stir fry is based around thick, squiggly udon noodles that are just firm enough to have a pleasing bite. They are tossed with wedges of shiitake mushroom, shredded carrot and bean sprouts in a light soy-based sauce.
The bigger, protein-based plates are listed under a heading of “Meat with Me”. Steaks, chicken and salmon are offered with a choice of sauces including a nori (seaweed) bearnaise.
More inventive is pork belly (from The Dairyman in the Barossa) that is braised in a dashi stock until both flesh and fat become as soft as jelly, while the skin is fried crisp to serve. Two large slabs are topped with lotus crisps, pickled cucumber and a nori cracker. The best accompaniment though are the tender strips of charred leek and a drizzle of “sweet and sour sauce”.
Such a substantial serve of meat needs the side salad that was ordered but doesn’t make it to the table. Otherwise the bloke looking after us doesn’t miss a beat.
He makes it easy to forget you are in a hotel, a leap the kitchen is struggling to manage. Koomo, as it stands, is an entertaining night out rather than a compelling dining experience. Judging by its popularity, that might be enough for now.
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