Ototo restaurant review: Hidden Melbourne bar shaking up clever cocktails, mod-Asian snacks
Melbourne has welcomed yet another hidden bar boasting mod-Asian eats and fun cocktails — so what makes it unique?
Food
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Here’s some food for thought: Melburnians love a bar.
We’ll raise a glass to almost any new watering hole that plants a stake in our city, be it
beneath the bustling streets of our concrete jungle or swinging high in its treetops.
And if it’s any good – we will always tell a mate about it.
After visiting Ototo, the new-ish Japanese fusion bar that’s opened beneath restaurant sibling, Akaiito, there was no further chat.
But that’s not to say what owner Christine Chen and head chef Winston Zhang are doing
at the broody drinking den is all bad, either.
The duo has been running traditional Japanese restaurant Akaiito for about three years but in a lockdown recalibration rethought the use of the basement to open Ototo.
They’ve taken a mod-Asian template, installed moody interiors and ensured there’s enough sake and snacks to feel the part.
Look for the Akaiito street sign and let the zippy red ribbon art fixture pulsing along the ceiling lure you downstairs.
The space is all black, with charming nods to the room’s former life as a bank, with colonial-era original wooden beams and bluestone walls.
Four roomy, grey, semicircle booths take up one side of the 90-seater, with a few high tops and a sleek long black marble bar occupying the other.
We’re here for drinking, and bartending whiz Lionel Ong knows what’ll do the trick.
Choose from all the usual suspects, as well as sake, umeshu (sweet plum wine), ice-cold beer on tap (including Ototo’s rotating house pour) and glass kegs filled with pre-batched spirits, such as nori and burnt-butter fat-washed gins.
As kooky as they read, those cocktails are firecrackers, namely the chilli-infused tequila, a Southeast Asian spin on the margarita, loaded with lemongrass, ginger, kaffir lime and salty savoury shrimp attitude.
Even the mocktails are soberingly good: a floral, mint and cucumber kombucha tea is hit-the spot refreshing.
When it comes to food, if Akaiito is a staunch traditionalist, then Ototo is the unruly younger sibling running amok and losing its way with Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese and Korean flavours.
Zhang (formerly of Sydney’s Sokyo) throws two whole squid ($32) on the traditional Japanese robata grill until just cooked, scores and drenches them in a glowing orange lap cheong (Chinese sausage) sauce that lacks char or spice. A missed flavour opportunity but nice enough.
The sashimi platter ($27 for nine pieces, $45 for 15) is fail safe and made up of Aussie caught seafood (save for the Hokkaido scallops) and is expertly sliced, with supple tiles best swiped in heart-starting wasabi or salty soy.
Sadly my friend’s marker of “if the sashimi is good, that’s a sign of things to come” is really only true for part of our Ototo experience.
I was happy with the number of snack options – it’s a solid list – and you can certainly make a meal of either tender black Angus short ribs ($48), a giant, kombu (seaweed) butter soaked hunk of roasted pumpkin ($19) or the fried half roast chicken ($28). The latter is a standout, roasted for three hours then dunked whole in the fryer until crisp and drowned in a sweet and sour Shandong sauce made from chilli, garlic, vinegar and soy. Aside from being a tad overcooked and messy to eat, that sauce is the best thing we tasted all night.
A few things at Ototo need a rethink.
I’m talking more serviettes, appropriate cutlery and larger (or more) side plates.
It’s a bit dark and fiddly to eat fried chicken and not have a stain on your shirt. And the toilets? The wobbly doorknobs had me thinking I’d locked myself in, which could be amusing (or scary) after a few drinks.
The pace is slow, the vibe a little low midweek and the music odd (did someone say Michael Buble?)
Ototo will do the trick for an after work bev or snack yet offers not much more that’s worth telling a mate about.
Ototo
349-351 Flinders Ln, Melbourne
Open: Tue-Sat: From 5pm
Cost: Snacks ($11-$24) Large plates ($19-$48) dessert ($18)
Try this if you like: Robata, Longsong
Go-to dish: Crispy half roasted chicken
Rating: 6.5/10