New Asian grill Shobosho offers Adelaide’s best kitchen theatre
NEW Asian grill, Shobosho, offers Adelaide’s best kitchen theatre
THERE are two types of footy fans and the distinction has nothing to do with which team they support.
One group prefers the climate control and clinking glassware of a members bar. The other will brave the filthiest downpour to sit by the boundary where they can hear, even feel, every crunching bump and eye-watering smother.
Shobosho, the next-level Asian grill house opened last month in Leigh St, offers similar choices. The first is a seat in the row of booths down one side of the dining room, or even the two tables in the front window display, where the focus can stay on the intriguing Japanese-and-beyond flavours.
The other is to roll up your sleeves, settle on a stool close to the action and watch as a battle-hardened team tames the custom-built, steel-clad, fire-breathing monster of a kitchen.
Hefty, bronzed chooks spin slowly on a rotisserie, their claws reaching out like youngsters on a rollercoaster ride. White-hot coals are lifted gingerly from the hellish furnace and transferred to a cast-iron dish. Skewers of beef and chook are turned with nimble fingers over the yakitori grills. Each new order is answered by a chorus of “ayes” down the line – and cranks up the tension just a little more.
With his first foray into Asian kitchen, Simon Kardachi (Press, Oggi, Melt etc.) has delivered Adelaide’s most compelling food theatre. If the elevated kitchen at Oggi is like a night at the opera, Shobosho is like being ringside at a heavyweight bout.
Kardachi, as always, finds the right people for his projects, or the right projects for his people. In this case he has brought home Adam Liston, an accomplice from days long gone, whose most recent foray was a contemporary, yakitori-based restaurant in Melbourne. What the pair have created here, with help from designer Studio-Gram, is more ambitious, incorporating Japanese, Korean and other influences.
If the description above makes the cooking sound rudimentary, what is delivered on the plate is most often complex and refined, the influence of the fire shifting from subtle ashes to veg that’s burnt within an inch of its life. This is aided by a cracking drinks selection in which wine and sake are equal stakeholders, so conversation can quickly shift from vineyard location to rice polish rates.
Tag-team sommeliers Josh Picken and Ollie Margan handle it all with aplomb.
Cold, clear sake, hovering somewhere between dry riesling and fino sherry, shimmers beside two stunning seafood starters. A prawn cracker, sprinkled with yuzu salt and togarashi (Japanese spice mix), is piled with prawn pieces bound in a mayo spiked with Korean chilli paste. A final butterflied cutlet, poached in dashi for a few seconds, is balanced on top, with a blob of seaweed mayonnaise. It’s all gone in one or two bites but it’s a clear frontrunner for the year’s best snack.
Sake-cured kingfish, rolled in burnt nori and onion powder, is draped over slices of green apple, dashi concentrate and fresh wasabi. A dried wakame crumble and trout roe top a combination that by turns is crunchy, fleshy, smoky and juicy. It’s totally ravishing and, like the prawn, I’d have ordered another given half a chance.
Same goes for the leek, which is thrown whole into the blazing fire pit and left until the outer layers are completely blackened. This burnt offering is kept warm, then split open to order, revealing a soft, melting heart. Dressed with smoked buttermilk and a vivid green spring onion oil, it takes barbecue onion flavour into wonderful uncharted territory.
Chick on stick comes in two forms. I prefer the simple grilled skin flavour of the partially boned out wings, served with a lemon wedge, to the “king of yakitori” meatball with egg yolk and tare sauce that is dominated by the seasoning even before it is dipped. The rotisserie chicken, meanwhile, has been brined and sprayed with teriyaki, but the leg we are served is all about the dense, muscular meat and old school flavour of the free-range bird, with a little extra chewing a small price to pay.
Cubes of Korean BBQ-style rump are finished by being dropped directly onto logs of glowing charcoal, so the edges become crisp and singed. Use a pair of tongs to pry the meat away, then roll in a lettuce leaf with a stellar selection of condiments including salted cucumber, house-made kim chee and a white miso from Tassie you won’t be able to leave alone. The dish is a hands-on, finger-licking, explosion of flavour and yet another reason to return to the most exciting newcomer the city has seen for some time. Book your front-row seat now.
SHOBOSHO
17 Leigh St, city, 8366 2224, shobosho.com.au
OWNERS Simon Kardachi, Adam Liston, Harriot Berry and partners
CHEF Adam Liston
FOOD Japanese/Korean SNACKS $4-$27 YAKITORI $6-$10 LARGER $22-$48
DESSERT $12-15
DRINKS Wine and sake play equal roles on a list that is best used in consultation with the excellent staff
Open for LUNCH Tue-Sun
DINNER Tue-Sun
Score 8.5