Previous SlideNext Slide

Gacha Cafe in the CBD showcases the lucky-dip joys of gachapon: Japanese capsule toys that swoop into your hands after you feed the vending machine tokens. They’ve spun down chutes since the 1960s, when the first gachapon machine was invented by Ryuzo Shigeta in Tokyo. These novelties tumble forth in plastic shells and are spectacularly diverse; they can feature everything from famous Japanese characters such as Hello Kitty to mini versions of Kengo Kuma’s intricate buildings and a remorseful Godzilla fronting a press conference, apologising for the damage.

Located near the Kent Street exit of Meriton Retail Precinct, the vending machines at Gacha Cafe offer soup-themed keyrings (miso or minestrone, anyone?), tiny restaurant furniture and the cranky carb-hunting characters from The Bread Thief book series. Slipping tokens into these machines can even affect the menu at the surrounding kiosk: public enthusiasm for onigiri-themed merchandise led to Gacha Cafe selling edible versions of these rice balls to diners.

“Onigiri are as popular with the Japanese as sandwiches are with Australians,” says director Yosuke Shimauchi. He’s from Kyoto and recalls his parents pressing home-made versions into his lunchbox. Locally, we’ve seen a recent wave of eateries (Parami, Domo 39) specialising in these rice balls, but Gacha Cafe’s line-up detours from obvious territory.

These surprising riffs are influenced by the other Sydney restaurants that Shimauchi oversees, such as Goryon-san (which trades in smoky skewers) and Rengaya (which specialises in Japanese barbecue).

Gacha Cafe’s bestselling yakitori onigiri is headlined with grilled chicken tossed in teriyaki sauce, charred further and served in seaweed drizzled with sesame oil. The yakiniku rice ball recalls the deep sizzle of Japanese barbecue: its star ingredient is 9+ Australian wagyu beef, marinated in a sweet in-house barbecue sauce.

Golden egg umami kombu onigiri is the must-try item: it lives up to its extremely sunny and flavour-rich description. The yolk is cooked at low temperatures, then steeped in zaru-tsuyu – a sauce that soba noodles are usually dipped into. “The water is then drained from the yolk, resulting in a thick, creamy, golden-coloured yolk,” says Shimauchi. The result is a supremely jammy egg, pressed into really sticky rice. It’s like eating ajitsuke tamago, the soy-sweetened egg that makes any bowl of ramen greater.

You can also bite into ultra-leftfield rice balls at Gacha Cafe: one oozes with Philadelphia cream cheese that’s been marinated in Kyoto-sourced white miso for several weeks and tastes like after-school memories of eating Le Snak. Ume, a traditional onigiri flavour, gets remixed with dried plums soaked in Australian honey and enhanced with bonito flakes. Shimauchi turns up the volume on everything in the edamame-packed onigiri: spicy soybean mince gets crowded with shiitake mushrooms, rich kombu seaweed and grilled edamame showered with salt.

Gacha Cafe’s go-for-it energy also powers its dessert items. Even on the coldest days, it’s hard to turn down the mango milky snow, a delightful heap of soft ice topped with whipped cream, black pearls and ripples of mango-flavoured sauce and jelly. And why have an ordinary milkshake when your drink can be dunked with gelato from the rainbow-bright freezer cabinet? (I picked the grassy swirls of matcha tiramisu.)

Because Gacha Cafe is part of a hospitality group that includes Haymarket’s Matcha-Ya dessert parlour, ceremony-grade green tea powder from Kyoto is sprinkled through many of the sweets and drinks. For a different buzz, try the Kyoto Ogawa Coffee: it’s strong, smoky and tastes like the dark roasts poured in kissaten (old-school cafes).

“This coffee is actually sold in a shop near my parents’ house in Japan,” says Shimauchi. Although he enjoys Australia’s coffee, he wants locals to experience the “elegant charcoal aroma” of these Japanese brews.

For something sweeter, there’s the yuzu smash drink, bright with the juice and zest of citrus fruits from Kochi prefecture on Shikoku Island. Like everything else at this eatery, it tastes just like Japan. I may not have a Godzilla-style press conference to make my feelings known, but I’d like to declare how Gacha Cafe is like cracking open a toy capsule as it swooshes down the machine: random, fun and worth repeating.