Daylesford’s Kazuki Japanese restaurant relocates to Lygon St Carlton
There’s been many new openings at former foodie hotspot Lygon Street recently, but can a relocation of a Daylesford favourite turn a precinct that rates highly on Tripadvisor into somewhere Melbourne actually goes to eat?
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Could this be the rebirth of cool Carlton?
The end of last year saw a flurry of openings, a perfect storm of hot new eateries all conspiring to transform Lygon St from a precinct that rates highly on Tripadvisor to somewhere Melbourne actually goes to eat.
Forget Underbelly, this is a new era of happy belly.
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The boys from Ramblr in Prahran have added a northside sibling to their Leonard’s House of Love, though this time they’re slicing pizza instead of flipping burgers. The long-awaited, multi-zoned King & Godfree now offers caffeine to start the day at K&G Deli, wine to end it at Agostino, and a rooftop party in the sky at Johnny’s Green Room. And, perhaps most incongruously of them all, there’s Kazuki’s, Daylesford’s high-end Japanese that’s relocated to the gingham-clad heart of the strip.
While the original has been transformed into a casual pan Asian eatery called Sakana, this new city flagship is a magnificent space, as serenely refined as Ikebana.
Beautifully, considerately lit, there are smart design touches everywhere. The ceramics are gorgeous, the chairs supremely comfortable, the cutlery refined.
It’s a lovely room to spend time in.
Now with two restaurants Kazuki Tsuya has taken a step back from the pans with Anthony Hammel — who worked with Kazuki in Daylesford before working with Mark Best at Marque and Pei Modern — leading the kitchen here.
That means Kazuki himself is working the dual floors, helping Shane Harris (ex Pei Modern, Lee Ho Fook) deliver dishes that make up the five ($120) or seven courses ($150) in the mandatory tasting menu on a Friday or Saturday night (a la carte is offered other times, with three courses for $90).
To begin, a handful of small bites that set the bar high.
A plump, hand-harvested Goola pipi is served in its shell, uncooked, untouched save a sliver of pickled ginger to highlight its sweet sea saltiness. There’s a long crisp nori canoe smeared with terrific whipped cod roe and topped with pearls of Yarra Valley roe for a few mouthfuls of salty creamy crunch.
While skewered and coal-cooked duck hearts that come sprinkled with furikakae for a one-two hit of iron and umami won’t be to everyone’s taste, profiteroles piped with chicken liver parfait and topped with plum jam are easy to make friends with.
There’s a sense of Euro style teamed with Japanese sensibilities that defines the meal that includes, next up, ubiquitous cured kingfish that here has a subtle lingering ginger heat. It’s served with whispers of radish, powerful fish crackling and pomelo segments that should’ve been fresher, juicier, sharper.
A large Skull Island prawn, however, is fabulous. Nestled on lettuce swimming in a sake butter sauce with a few dots of avruga adding bursts of salt, this fat meaty tiger prawn is simply terrific.
Cracking-crusted sourdough spread with “Kazuki’s famous nori butter” is on mopping duties for the dashi broth surrounding supremely tasty pork that is, however, too overpowering for the subtle sweetness of the crab it comes topped with along with a crisp kohlrabi leaf.
But when you find crisp kale leaves adorning breakfast plates around the city, and we now see crisped up fish skin in (admittedly good) pubs, I think the tasting menu needs to try harder. It’s delicious, no doubt. But exciting? No. Not for $150 a head.
But you won’t go hungry, as portions are very generous. For those who feel obliged to make a comment under any review that isn’t of a plate-hugging parma (“Where’s the food?” “Bet you’d need to eat a burger on the way home”), this could be the fine-diner that finally puts paid to such criticisms.
Though they’d still, rightfully, find fault with the eyewateringly expensive Euro-centric wine list — one of my main memories of the Daylesford original.
Cobaw Ridge chardonnay for $21 a glass that will set you back $50 for the bottle at their cellar door is just one example, and coupled with service that erred to the upsell — when looking at wines around the $60-70 mark, a $100 bottle was suggested — it leaves a bitter taste.
That said, the matches ($120 a head) are very good. A glass of champagne with the snacks, an elegant and pure Bindi chardonnay with the prawn, an aged sake an excellent match with the lamb — another big portion. While again full of flavour, its accompanying spring veg included tired yellowing edamame, and the pea tendrils garnishing are a once high-end affectation that’s now a cafe cliche.
Kazuki’s is enjoyable — what’s not to like about ruby chocolate ganache teamed with matcha ice cream to end? — but it’s not yet as good as it was, now more a case of overprice and underdeliver. Turn that equation around — now that would be cool.
KAZUKI’S
121 Lygon St, Carlton
9349 2223
Open: Lunch and dinner Wed-Sat; Sun lunch
Go-to dish: Skull Island prawn with sake
Score: 14/20
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