Friday night in the city
Jac’s had this insatiable craving for sashimi for a couple of weeks now. We met in town after work on Friday with plans to grab something nice for dinner (Jac hoped involving sashimi :)) and then just walk around the shops. Although it’s nice to get home and put your feet up after an exhausting week, it’s sometimes also nice to get away from the house, you know? Especially when being at home reminds you of all the housework that you’ve been putting off doing.
We had dinner at Taka, on the corner of Barrack St and Wellington St. We’d been meaning to eat at Taka for many months now, but somehow never did. We stood outside and studied the menu for a couple of minutes before establishing that our respective cravings would be met (Jac -sashimi, me – some sort of chicken dish), but I must admit another deciding factor was the cold wind and rain – I really wanted to escape from the cold and wet and Taka seemed as a good a place as any right then and there!
Jac ordered the sashimi set – small size.
The sashimi was tuna, salmon and squid. The menu suggested there would be snapper too, but there wasn’t any on this plate. We figured either they’d run out of snapper or you only got snapper in the large serve. Either way Jac enjoyed the sashimi. The tuna was her favourite.
I did want to order the chicken karaage set but felt guilty at the thought of consuming even more deep fried chicken, so I settled for oyako don, Japanese-style omelette cooked with chicken, onions and soy sauce and served over rice. Very comfort food-like, though I must say fried chicken has comforted me on many MANY an occasion. :) I had the small set, which did not come with miso, which suited me just fine. As I started eating I discovered that there were pickles on top of the rice, underneath the omelette and chicken. As much as I like pickles, I prefer them on the side so I can control the distribution/concentration of pickle flavour. Served sitting on the rice sitting under the steaming blanket of egg, the flavour of the pickles had pretty much left their mark. Not catastrophic by any means, but not ideal. I did enjoy the dish.
Jac also ordered a small potato cake set, which we shared. As my oyako don didn’t come with any salad, I eagerly grazed on the potato cake salad garnish.
The potato cakes were lovely – so crisp and golden brown on the outside with a fantastic crunch, yet ever so fluffy and soft white potato on the inside. The potato had peas and corn kernels in it too, which of course met with my approval. The peas and corn reminded me of the sea shanty, another crumbed deep fried item I really like.
It was busy (Taka is always visibily busy when I peer in the window as I walk past), but we easily got a table. You order at the counter and are given one of those drink coaster-buzzers that vibrate and light up when your order is ready – so you can sit wherever you like and just come up to collect your meal when it’s ready. You can help yourself to the free green tea from an urn, all set up with cups ready to go. It was very good value – bad TFP didn’t write the prices down, but I think our dishes were all around $5-$6-ish, coming to a total of $17.50. A couple of girls at the table next to us seemed to be really enjoying their karaage chicken – next time we eat at Taka I’ll definitely have to order it.