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There are several noteworthy reasons to visit Tokyo Taco, a bright and breezy Japanese-Mexican diner on Newtown’s main street.

One is the opportunity to pay $13 for food created by a chef who’s worked at the world’s most famous restaurant, the three-Michelin-starred Noma in Copenhagen.

Another is the notable merit of the cooking which, to a fault, is a gigantic culinary leap from other, similarly priced, menus at various fast food-style outlets.

A third reason, and the one causing our table to inspect each dish with the depth of a science experiment, is Tokyo Taco’s nori taco shells.

Large, crisp and formed via lightly battered sheets of nori, they resemble square seaweed handkerchiefs frozen in a U-turn of bubbly golden crunch.

It took chef and Tokyo Taco co-owner Jordan Hajek “two-and-a-half years of failure” to create these edible marine plant tacos and a whole lot of research and development.

“Getting the coating right, developing the right crispiness, making sure it kept its shape for delivery, checking its shape and crispiness stayed with all the fillings inside,” he says.

This fastidiousness, he says, which extended to sourcing the right nori, types of pepper, smoked paste, spices and chillies, from countries including Japan, Mexico and Peru, is normally the approach of more high-end restaurants.

“But what we’re doing is bringing restaurant quality food to the masses,” Hajek
says. “We’re still applying the base fundamentals you would with a restaurant to a fast casual environment, in a fast food sense.”

And, not to go on about it, all for $13 to $16. Depending on how many extra
ingredients you add, or how wild you go with the build-your-own menu options, which allow white sushi rice to be swapped with wholegrain brown rice or cauliflower rice, or tacos to feature extra proteins, pickled vegetables, salsas or guacamole, you’ll still come away with change from a $20.

Served upright in a dinky cardboard case, the tacos, available with fillings that include smoky soy chicken, miso salmon, pulled pork, adobe jackfruit or umami mushroom, are a two-hander situation.

The soy chicken version, a fat thicket of sushi rice, jalapenos, caramelised chilli sauce, Kewpie mayonnaise and sesame seeds, is luscious, fresh, mildly spiced stuff, easily gulped down but memorable in its levels of flavour, tenderness and crunch.

Equally good is a taco bowl, a poke-style arrangement offering the full fillings range, but without the shell. A sashimi-added version is lush stuff, with pickled
cucumber, a good amount of rice, edamame and kicky aji sauce.

There are also “Nachosu” plates, which feature blue corn tortillas chips, pico de gallo and lime guacamole.

‘What we’re doing is bringing restaurant quality food to the masses.’

Jordan Hajek

We finish with vanilla and watermelon flavoured soft-serve, nicely creamy, not
gobsmackingly sweet and made with a plant-based recipe.

Hajek, who spent almost two years at Noma and is known for creating
menus at north shore cafes Celsius and Monstera, is keen to bring quality and nutrition to the broader consumer and market.

“Our sauces, our proteins, our guacamole, our salsas, everything we do is made in-house,” he says. “Basically, every day we’re delivering a restaurant quality service which extends to our staff as well.”

Tokyo Taco is still a casual, although cool, spot. The decor features a brick wall that looks like a crumbling archeological find, pinky orange neon signage, animated Japanese mural art and a handmade floor-tile mosaic at the
door. The piped music is loud.

There is banquette seating and easy-wipe wooden tables inside, window counter
seating, and orange-edged stools with tables outside. Paper napkins are in dispensers, cutlery is wooden, food comes in sustainable packaging and drinks, which include Japanese, Latin American and Australian beers and soft drinks, are in the original bottle or can.

This keeps the prices down and curtails waste, but also means tabletops, outside in our case, are sticky or bear the remains of previous patrons’ excited eating.
Normal stuff for a busy mainstreet diner.

Staff are left, right and centre doing their best to wipe and clean-up as customers flow in.

This is a busy, noisy, unfussy diner serving the kind of food that wouldn’t be out of place served on fancy plates upon linen tablecloths in a hushed environment. Get $20 out of your wallet and eat it here instead.