Wa Kenbo in Fitzroy serves high-end Japanese fusion to mixed effect

With plates busier than Shinjuku station, more is more at this new and very adventurous fine diner in Fitzroy. And it’s unlike any other restaurant in Melbourne, Japanese or otherwise, writes Dan Stock.

Coco Chanel would be turning in her grave.

At new Japanese fine diner Wa Kenbo you’ll find octopus and avocado, turnips and tomato and a citrus called kabosu, chicken skin and nori and pumpkin noodles. On the one plate.

There’s lamb with mint raita and Amalfi lemon confit and red sorrel and beetroot on another, and a chickpea-stuffed mushroom and goat’s curd and radicchio and green almond and fried chickpeas and carrot on another.

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The tea-smoked duck is the go-to dish at Wa Kenbo. Picture: Rebecca Michael

Rather than submit to the fashion doyenne’s famous maxim — before you leave the house, take one thing off — it seems chef Kenji Ito subverts it to read: before a plate leaves the pass, put one thing on.

Austere Japanese simplicity this is not. Instead you’ll find dishes busier than Shinjuku.

Chef Ito spent the past two decades in Adelaide, first augmenting his top-end Tokyo training with experience in wineries and western restaurants before running a much-loved, oft-awarded eponymous Japanese fine diner for a decade until 2016.

He’s made the trip down the highway and has now turned up on a Fitzroy backstreet with a diminutive 30-seat dining room that’s a quietly harmonious space of posture-enforcing high-backed booths and smaller tables along a banquette, walls of layered stone and artfully lit curves setting a scene most elegant.

Owner-chef Kenji Ito in the dining room at Wa Kenbo. Picture: Rebecca Michael

The wagyu tartare, which comes served pretty as you like. Picture: Rebecca Michael

So, too, does the opening gambit on the $120 tasting menu: a plump Kangaroo Island oyster topped with crème fraiche and a touch of Spanish caviar, a tomato dashi dressing with a hit of jalapeño finishing a power-packed mouthful of creamy, smoky sea-saltiness with a tickle of heat.

Wagyu tartare comes served pretty as you like in a round rice cracker “sandwich”, the minced meat tossed through tiny dice of translucent sweet potato noodle that adds alluring chew. A dollop of truffled mayonnaise is, thankfully, subtle.

Something from the vegetable section of the menu follows — a la carte is broken into snacks, seafood, meat and rice/hot pot dishes, with prices ranging $25-$45 — a large mushroom filled with mashed chickpea sitting on a vibrant orange slick of Kyoto carrot oil made from veg harvested from chef’s garden, alongside powerfully delicious wasabi rocket and its flowers.

Pickled green almonds sliced like olives are a fun addition, but then there’s also crunchy fennel and sharp radicchio and fried chickpeas and goat’s curd. It’s nice, if not revelatory.

The tea smoked duck is one of the best whole-use-of-the-bird dishes you’ll likely see. Picture: Rebecca Michael

Accompanying vegetables to the tea-smoked duck. Picture: Rebecca Michael

The penultimate plate, however, is. The best whole-bird use of duck you’re likely to see, first you’ll be served a bone broth covering edamame and a jelly-like plant called junsai topped with carrot foam. It’s outrageously good.

It’s quickly followed by chewy-skinned, green tea-smoked breast that manages to be both bold and elegant, and spicy “chorizo” made from the neck and leg meat. A powder of dehydrated cartilage is sprinkled atop, soy-soaked grilled shishito pepper and quandong (native peach) add salt and sweet acid respectively.

Three pretty little veg dishes are served to accompany, including a potato and nashi pear salad, and a square of tempura broad bean paste.

With so much going on, Coco’s turning like a doner kebab, but Kenny G is meanwhile high-fiving, for there are few places where more mindless sax takes place. It’s like being stuck in an elevator from hell.

Seared tuna with stracciatella is an Italian-Japanese mash up that’s a bit of a mix-up. Picture: Rebecca Michael

Food that’s anything but boring deserves more than muzak. Or the sound of silence.

For it’s not like the staff don’t fill the room with sweet-natured chatter. They’ll be at your side with lengthy descriptions of each dish — that’s just the ingredients — teamed with an origin story or two.

Somewhat overeager, they’ll be back to inquire after the second mouthful of every dish, and again upon clearing. Should you not finish everything on your plate, they’ll want to know why not.

Sometimes it’s simply because more really doesn’t equal better.

I get, for instance, how you could play off tuna’s rich fattiness by doubling down and serving it with creamy cheese, but I think the fingers of Italian stracciatella do little for the seared tuna they’re draped across.

In fact, the rest of the dish — pickled lotus root, a Japanese “land seaweed” from the garden, shiso oil and air dried sea bream roe — almost doesn’t need the tuna either, so delicious they eat on their own.

Too much of a good thing: the fig leaf pannacotta. Picture: Rebecca Michael

To finish, a subtle fig leaf panna cotta with candied cumquat was perfect before the cherry granita, a nutty biscuit crumble and lychees joined the party.

In contrast, the wine list created and served by Kenji’s wife augmented by imported Japanese beers and sake is a lesson in worldly, if expensive, simplicity.

Wa Kenbo is unlike any other restaurant in Melbourne, Japanese or otherwise.

While it’s great to see someone so evidently marching to his own drumbeat, I just wish more of the dishes came with undeniable wow, rather than a perplexing why.

WA KENBO

69 Victoria St, Fitzroy

Score: 14/20

wakenbo.com.au

Ph: 9041 9495

Open: Tues-Sat dinner

Go-to dish: Smoked duck