Diners queuing out the door for sandos at this Japanese vinyl cafe
It’s also serving soba, pan-fried potato mochi, Japanese curry bread, and canned strawberry cake. But you’d best arrive early.
Precise simplicity. That’s how Tze-Huei Choo likes to describe Japanese food.
“There’s always that precision to Japanese cooking, to let the ingredients sing,” Tze-Huei says. “It’s not about overcomplicating it.”
Keeping things simple is at the heart of Supernova, Tze-Huei’s new Japanese vinyl cafe, which he unveiled last Monday with his brother, Chewie Choo. But then the Choos have form after previously opening James & Antler, a James Street cafe dedicated entirely to variations on croque monsieur sandwiches (they also own Mitch & Antler, a popular breakfast cafe in Mitchelton).
Supernova drills down on katsu sandos and soba.
The sandos, for starters, are different to the increasingly ambitious creations you tend to find elsewhere in town. Instead, the Choos have – for the most part – tried to bring the sandwich back to its core ingredients.
“A lot of people are obviously doing sandos,” Tze-Huei says. “But we’re trying to stay away from the trend. We’ve tried to strip it back to what it originally was in the 1930s, and I think that’s what people have been responding to with the menu.”
One week in and Supernova is already seeing queues of diners out the door waiting for one of its 35 seats. They’re mostly lining up for the short menu of sandos, which come with either chicken, pork, spicy tuna, egg or black Angus beef. All are made with lightly toasted Japanese-style milk bread and house-made barbecue sauce, and are accompanied by a barbecue dipping sauce and pickled ginger.
The only nod to fanciness is a Mother and Daughter sandwich, which matches chicken katsu with soft egg mayo, and the push-the-boat-out SUPER-Nova Sando, which packs in Tajima A4 wagyu striploin, a house-made barbecue miso demi glaze, caviar and gold leaf, for a not insubstantial $75.
“The bread was hard. During the pre-opening days, we discovered that trying to find a traditional shokupan [Japanese milk bread] is quite difficult,” Tze-Huei says. “And with normal sandwich loaf, the bread would collapse when we put the protein in, even when toasted.
“But we found our current bread supplier does a semi-Japanese bread that’s slightly denser. And it actually copes with the heat when we put the protein in – it keeps its shape and still tastes like a shokupan. But we were tasting so much bloody bread, it’s not even funny.”
The soba menu keeps it similarly straightforward, with different proteins – wagyu sirloin tataki, tuna sashimi, crispy-skin barramundi and tempura vegetables – matched to different broths.
Away from sandos and soba there’s a short breakfast menu that includes pan-fried potato mochi served with aged cheddar sauce and hot-honey-soy boiled eggs; an English muffin with a smashed beef patty, soft folded eggs, hash brown, cheddar and sweet barbeque sauce; and tamagoyaki with milk bread, aged cheddar sauce and hot miso honey.
Cabinet items include flat croissants, Japanese-style curry bread (beef curry encased in dough that’s then coated in breadcrumbs and deep-fried), and a strawberry cake canned in the cafe using an automated canning machine from China.
Overseeing the kitchen is the Choos’ group chef, Zac Walker, after original chef Kym Machin exited the project pre-opening due to personal reasons. Walker had just a few weeks to get up to speed on the menu.
“Hence a really quiet soft opening,” Tze-Huei says. “But for Zac, it wasn’t a problem. The only thing he said he needed to understand was Japanese soy because there are different elements between different regional soys. So for him, it was understanding that, understanding the broth, sake and mirin, and whatnot. But the menu plays to his strengths as a chef – his food is very precise.”
For drinks there’s specialty coffee by Providore & Co’s Kasa Coffee, matcha and hojicha (including iced matcha and hojicha lattes), and Wild 1 juices. A short cocktail and wine list will launch in coming weeks once the Choos have secured a liquor licence.
The fitout of the eatery, located on the ground floor of the Eminence building on McLachlan Street in Fortitude Valley, hasn’t changed much from its days as Joedy’s Cafe, with the Choos softening the space slightly with cushions on the banquettes and a lounge setting in a light-filled nook overlooking the street. Taking pride of place on the counter is a vinyl record player, for which Tze-Huei has already collected 40 records, with another 120 to arrive soon.
“Our vision since Mitch & Antler is to buck the trend, but also try to produce food that people haven’t seen much of before,” Tze-Huei says. “This is food that’s easily recognisable, but we’re trying to strip it back down to the originality of what it is.
“Brisbane people travel a lot. Gone are the days when you can introduce something people haven’t seen before. You have TikTok, you have Instagram. I remember eating a Mother and Daughter at a FamilyMart in Japan; it’s about tapping into those memories and the nostalgia of people. That’s what we’re trying to do here.”
Open Mon-Fri, 7am-2pm
93 McLachlan Street, Fortitude Valley
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.