Koi Restaurant (SoHo, New York City)

Koi SoHo is located on the ground floor of the Trump SoHo hotel. I first saw it when I was staying at the Trump SoHo last summer but did not get a chance to check it out then.

It was not a planned dinner and we ended up here as a result of my tummy not feeling too well earlier in the day and I did not feel like venturing out too much. So JN and I met up and had a 'walk in' table at Koi.

After having a drink at the bar, we sat down and at the recommendation of the very friendly Gina, we chose the following as shared plates. Apologies in advance for the quality of the photos, some were rather grainy due to the low lights at the restaurant!

Lobster Tacos with mango salsa and yuzu guacamole. This was a delightful dish with the crunchy tacos offsetting the small bites of lobster with hints of the mango and guacamole in the taste buds.

Sunfire Roll - this is one of Koi's signature rolls. It was filled with lobster, snow crab, cucumber and cilantro roll topped with mango, avocado and ichimi. Beautifully plated and smack bang full of flavour. Delish!

Koi Crispy Rice topped with spicy tuna and yellowtail tartare. Very interesting texture of the crunchy and slightly chewy crispy rice as the base. The tuna and yellowtail tasted very fresh.

Tounoya (Eastwood, Sydney)

These days Eastwood is seriously buzzing as a food hub. And it has been happening in the past few years. Now it is a suburb predominantly filled with Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese eateries. For example there are 6 outlets selling BBQ duck, pork and other Chinese roast meats. And counting..

Recently a friend of mine mentioned there was a new Japanese restaurant in Eastwood replacing what was the shoe warehouse. I strolled by one evening and could see effort was made in furnishing the restaurant.

I decided to check it out for dinner with some friends and made an effort to book a table. A decision I made when I realised there was a queue to get a table during my stroll.

To the right of the restaurant are booths with a tablet on the wall for ordering our meal. To the left is a more open area with tables that can take a large group of people. The rear of the restaurant are 2 Karaoke rooms for those who want to exercise their vocal chords on a night out!

We were seated in one of the booths and was engrossed looking at the dishes on the very small screen. So we resorted to asking for a menu and then ordered on the tablet. Absolutely convenient!

Soft shell crab salad - the soft shell crab was nicely crunchy and topped with a slightly tangy Mayo sauce.

Unagi don - sorry but I didn't get a chance to take a photo but young B devoured the unagi and left all the rice for her Dad. I can only imagine how delicious it was.

Yakitori and Pork Belly grilled skewers - this was ordered from the Grill section of the menu. Of the 2 meats I preferred the Yakitori chicken, there was a nice and smokey flavour to the meat.

Sushi and sashimi mix platter - nice presentation. I found the sashimi of scallops, tuna, salmon, ocean trout, and eel to be quite fresh.

Cho Cho San (Potts Point, Sydney)

The name itself calls for attention. When I first read about Cho Cho San, it was the name of the restaurant that caught my eye. And after reading many positive reviews, I was keen to check it out.

A few weeks ago, there was an opportunity to have lunch here and it was nice that we could actually book a table for lunch.  As opposed to get there early and queue up for a table! When I stepped into the restaurant, my first impressions were bright, light, clean, and modern! I felt excited to be here! The great lighting in the restaurant brought a big food blogger's smile to my face! :)

What's so interesting about Cho Cho San is none of the people at the helm are of Japanese origin and yet the menu is Japanese focused with a modern interpretation.

The menu is divided into Small dishes, Raw bar, Hibachi grill, Others, Sweets and Feed Me Please.

From the Small dishes section, we chose:

Silken tofu in tomato dashi - super smooth tofu with a delicious, flavourful yet subtle dashi. Very elegant broth but so good!

Tempura pumpkin - the pumpkin was soft and sweet with a contrasting texture of the crunchy tempura batter.

Fried chicken - a generous plate of what I would say was a very popular dish with us. The mayo went so well with the fried chicken.

Prawn bun - I wish I could have had more of this. A warm and toasted bun which cradled a beautiful mix of sweet prawn meat which had touches of mayo. Yum to the max! More please! :)

Sakura Kaiten Sushi (Melbourne CBD)

I think I have said before that sometimes unplanned things turn out to be delightful surprises! Well, this dinner at a little sushi bar in one of the little lanes in Melbourne was a surprise hit!

Sakura Kaiten Sushi is located on Little Collins Street closer to the Parliament end of town. We had no plans on where to dine so we just walked and walked and over time DD must have had a idea of where to go and we slowly but surely headed to this tiny sushi bar that was packed to the rafters!

I wasn't even planning on blogging about it as I wanted a night off and was feeling slightly stressed about the next day's big demo. But I couldn't help myself, the food looked good, it was packed and obviously very popular. So the blogger in me succumbed and out came my camera! :)

Unfortunately as we did not book we did not get seats at the actual bar but had a side table instead, thus the bad lighting of my photos! :(

Grilled salmon

Soft shell crab roll

Edamame

Salmon with lobster

Ippudo Sydney (CBD)

Yes, once again this is another place I have yet to check out until now! What is the matter with me? Well, my only defence is, there are so many places to check out in Sydney and sometimes it takes longer to get to one place. :)

Believe it or not, it has taken about 2 months of talking about Ippudo to finally actually eat there. My friend DD and I have been planning to take a lunch break there for the past 2 months but we haven't been successful in finding the right time to do this. Sheer frustration and quite laughable actually! Work gets crazy busy and sometimes there is no time for a decent lunch break.

But we did it one fine day! And to top it off, I decided to add another lunch visit to try out different things on the menu.

Ippudo Sydney as I am sure all of you in Sydney would know is located in Westfield Sydney. It opened in December 2012 and is still going strong. In the past year there has been an absolute boom for all things ramen and I believe this food empire opened in Sydney at the right time.

For lunch we decided to have their signature Ippudo pork bun which was soft, fluffy pillow-like buns filled with braised pork and the Ippudo original sauce. Their sauce is mayo based and was light and creamy. I could have popped a few of this in!

I had the Shiromaru Tamago which was the original tonkotsu broth served with thin noodles, pork loin, bean sprouts, black mushroom, flavoured egg and shallots. This is the hakata style of ramen broth.

DD had the Karaka Men Tamago which was the original tonkotsu broth, with special spicy miso, ground pork and flavoured egg.

Sake Restaurant (The Rocks, Sydney)

Believe it or not, this is my first time to Sake. I found the right excuse to check it out when K and S were recently in town from Melbourne. It's been a while since my last catch up with my nephew K when I was last in Melbourne and I cannot recall the last time we actually had a meal together in Sydney.

I didn't realise how cool an ambience Sake would have. When I stepped in to the restaurant, I immediately looked around and tried to absorb the decor and vibe around me. As I walked past the open kitchen, I was immediately greeted with a bunch of welcome greetings in Japanese!

We were seated in a long table and shared it with another couple. But The Sake team arranged the seating in such a way that there was an empty seat between us and the other couple. That gave us some privacy and we didn't feel cramped in.

As you would have expected from me, I had browsed the menu prior to my visit! :) So I had an idea of what I would like to order and with my visitors' agreement I went for gold (sort of!).

Sashimi platter - a small plate of extremely fresh sashimi of salmon, tuna, kingfish and snapper. We devoured it!

Kingfish jalapeño - this was recommended by the waitress and I can see why it is one of their signature dishes. There was just a slight kick in the jalapeño to lift up the flavours of the kingfish. The combination of the coriander and yuzu soy was subtle and not too overwhelming. Again, it was a hit with us!

Steamed prawn dumplings - Chinese inspired dumplings but with a twist. It had strips of noodle instead of a wonton piece covering the prawn and had such an interesting texture. Loved that it was different and delicious too!

Sashimi tacos - these were salmon and tuna sashimi diced and filled in baby tacos with chilled tomato salsa. They were matched with kozaemon junmai 'sake shots'. I normally don't have sake but I had to try this. Wow! I definitely liked it, both the tacos and the shot. I found the tacos just a tad small in size but other than that, the combination of flavours and textures were good.

Oki Oki

Sometimes when a friend wants to meet up in a suburb that I am not too familiar with, I start scrambling for ideas on where to meet for a meal. I also take it as an opportunity to check out local treasures and blog about them. Such fun, oh such fun!!!!

Well, this time it was to meet for lunch in Hornsby. The only thing I know about in Hornsby is the Westfield Shopping Centre. So I 'googled' and found a Japanese restaurant which caught my interest. It is called Oki Oki.

What a lovely find. It is located right across from the Hornsby Railway Station, a block away from the railway entrance. I met my friend LG at Westfield and we took a walk to Oki Oki.

We were both pleasantly surprised at the food. There was a very good range of Japanese food on the menu and I found it difficult to choose as there were so many dishes I wanted to try out!

So we settled with:

A small set of sashimi which had 12 pieces of a variety of fish. There was salmon, tuna, kingfish and another fish I failed to identify. It was fresh, light and just delicious!

Lunch box with spicy BBQ fish. The lunch box included a main, rice, miso soup, salad, deep fried spring rolls and dumpling, and sushi rolls.

Lunch box with chicken karaage.