Restaurant Review: Yoko is a Japanese pub with plenty of snacks

The outside space at Yoko is a great spot to settle in for drinks, knowing that if hunger hits you’re just some chopstick work away from satiation.

Alison Walsh

2 min read

December 19, 2019 - 3:00PM

Yoko outside area at Howard Smith Wharves.

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IT’S COCKTAIL o’clock down at Howard Smith Wharves, with the river glinting like molten silver as the day changes down from a rolling boil to a light dusk simmer.

Yoko, the new Japanese restaurant in the league of nations line-up at Brisbane’s most talked about hospitality precinct this year, is pulling in the punters to its tan leather booths out the front and the blonde wood interior that seems suggestive of bamboo steamer baskets, chopsticks and an upscale timber yard all at the same time.

A strip of video plays across an unadorned inside wall of the two-level enterprise and pops of sunny primary yellow are everywhere, from the waiter’s shoelaces to the fridge doors on the bar.

The menu is snack heavy but also includes noodles and larger dishes.

Badged as an izakaya (a pub with an emphasis on food), Yoko lays down its credentials with an encyclopaedic drinks list.

Cocktails are laced with yuzu, sake, Japanese whiskey or matcha; beer is given due respect with a line-up of Japanese brews and several locals including a Yoko Smooth Ale made by neighbouring Felons, sakes are available in three pour sizes and by-the-glass wines include house-branded drops from Mudgee.

The main wine list is extensive and global, with the base price $59 for a litre of the Yoko Riesling by Logan.

The menu is snack heavy – edamame, a raw bar including oysters, scallops and a sashimi platter, a tempura selection and mushroom or pork gyoza – but also includes noodles and larger dishes such as a tonkatsu pork chop with Japanese curry, steamed reef fish, and Black Angus porterhouse on the bone, all “designed to be shared” according to our waitress (is there any food that isn’t these days?).

Fish collar at Yoko

However, you wouldn’t want to be sharing my drink, a lip-tingling lush margarita – tequila, yuzu, lime, agave, with togarashi (chilli) salt on the rim as it’s rather limited in volume due to an iceberg-sized ice cube.

Our waitress is friendly and informative and earns points for pleasantly suggesting we’ve over-ordered and could drop one of our dishes.

Soon we’re sharing a pork katsu steamed bun ($8): a soft bao filled with a drool-worthy wedge of crumbed pork and a splodge of spicy hot aioli.

Chicken karaage ($14), listed under tempura on the menu, arrives clad in a pale-yellow coating made from tapioca flour, to keep the dish gluten-free so it can be served to all-comers, according to one of the staff.

It’s not especially appealing and nothing like traditional tempura or the kick-ass crunch usually associated with this go-to fry-up.

Pre-cut into snack-sized triangles, Japanese pancake okonomiyaki ($17) laced with kimchi and covered in a thin lattice of mayo is on the money; crunchy on the outside, soft inside and bursting with flavour.

Kimchi okonomiyaki at Yoko

Similarly, king fish collar ($16) delivers soft, sweet, succulent flesh bathed in a very subtle teriyaki sauce.

Wagyu intercostal – the fingers of meat from between ribs – ($34) is hacked into chopstick friendly pieces and comes with an onion salad with hints of horseradish.

Sweets, perhaps steamed lemon pudding with fruit, or fresh pineapple with umeshu (plum wine) and lime, also include soft-serve ice-cream and our matcha version ($8) is a smooth, delicious, pale green heatwave buster in a tall parfait glass.

Matcha soft serve ice-cream

The food, ambience and vibe at Yoko is very casual, but it’s action stations in the kitchen, with dishes landing on the bare-topped table in fairly rapid succession.

The awning over the outside space retracts as the sun sets and it’s an open-air, cool space in which to settle in for drinks, knowing that if hunger hits you’re just some chopstick work away from satiation.