The Mouth: Where do you take out-of-towners to dine?

The mate from the bush had a simple request. He just wanted “good Japanese”. Low-key Potts Point stalwart Busshari totally delivered.

Soft-shell crab karaage at Busshari, Potts Point.

Fellow Sydney folk, where do you take an out-of-towner?

It’s a bit of a vexed question, made worse by the influencer-industrial complex that tends to make hot tickets of “hospitality group” flagships and turn a local restaurant tour into a very expensive tick-a-box Contiki experience.

In the old days we used to love local and less-than-discovered gems – Oscillate Wildly, The Devonshire – but those are all long gone.

The other week, though, we had a friend in from the bush who was very easy to please.

Having left Sydney a few years ago for a remote corner of Victoria, where the closest thing to food culture is the Emperor’s Panda Garden Golden Dragon Chinese, old mate wanted just one thing: good Japanese.

“One of those places where you get a bit of fish and some meat and it’s, you know, fun,” he said.

And thus we found ourselves at Busshari, one of our favourite low-key Japanese joints that has sat at and survived a good 15 years (or more) at the junction of seedy Kings Cross and posh Potts Point.

Busshari: solid, high street Japanese. Picture: Britta Campion

This is not the rarefied atmosphere of some of the city’s amazing omakase sushi bars.

It’s not a hipster izakaya or cult ramen stop where diners line up in hope of one of the 32 bowls made lovingly each day.

Nor, for that matter, is it suburban razzle dazzle teppanyaki.

What is it, then? And what do you get?

Well, it’s solid high street Japanese that’s not part of a bigger operation, which in and of itself makes it worthy of support.

But it is more than just shopping strip fare. Order a flagon of cold sake, and they bring you a basket of ceramic cups to select.

Service is Japanese, but of the friendly, not austere variety.

Starters are fun: gyoza are very good, the wrappers gossamer thin. A bowl of deep fried crispy school prawns would be a thing unto itself with cold beers on a hot day. Some special duck “bao” sort of let us down as a bit greasy.

A big platter of raw fish, however, is just what the doctor ordered for our sushi-starved mate.

Generously cut, albeit not the most adventurous selection, what it lacked in delicacy it delivered in punch.

As requested, after the fish, meat: Sizzling wagyu over coals, sort of Japan’s answer to an American Mexican joint’s fajitas.

The very jaded might think it ordinary, but that is unfair.

To our out of town friend, it was extraordinary.

And in the end, that’s all that matters, right?

Busshari is at 119 Macleay St, Potts Point

— The Mouth is an anonymous critic and bon vivant who pays his own way around Sydney and beyond.