Daikoku Double Bay

A recent 21st led us to Daikoku in Double Bay for a Teppanyaki celebration. No stranger to the Japanese style, I talked the Teppanyaki new-comers through the proceedings and after ordering, we sat back to watch show.

For those unaware, the style of cooking is one in which you are seated around a hotplate and the Teppanyaki chef cooks your ordered seafood, meat and rice in front of you, with a bit of a flair.

I'm used to the chef joking around and flicking the salt and pepper shakers all over the place the whole way through. I was somewhat surprised when this chef made very little of the performance aspect.

I'm also accustomed to raw eggs being thrown at each diner, who is given a small bowl to attempt to catch in. No raw eggs this evening.

Most of our party chose from the various banquets on offer; ranging from $30 for the basic meal to $40 for the seafood banquet. There are of course larger meals for a higher price but none were ordered on this occasion.

Each banquet started with small salad of lettuce, carrot and cabbage in a tangy dressing. This was quite a hit!

Starter Salad

We were then given a sushi entree (a slice of salmon sushi roll and blow-torched piece of salmon on rice). Both quite nice, the latter having a slight charcoal taste.

Miso soup followed the sushi and then the show began. To dazzle all diners, the chef splayed oil over the hot plate and lit it, resulting in fast burning but huge flame! (Fortunately all eyebrows stayed in tact)

Prime position in front of the tall flames

First up was chicken, which was cooked on the hot plate with white wine and salt and then sliced into tiny pieces. Meanwhile, vegetables were expertly sliced and fried with oil, white wine, salt and who knows what else from the chef's quickly juggled bottles.

Vegetables and Chicken cooking away

Tossing the vegetables

Diced Chicken on the hotplate

The only remaining whole piece of chicken was sliced up and marinated in a teriyaki flavour before being served onto the plate of the diner whose banquet included it. I must say I tried it and it was fabulous!

Teriyaki Chicken on the plate

My seafood dishes (I splurged on the seafood banquet) were cooked next. Though not a fan of the scallops (I prefer them slightly more cooked as these were a tad mushy in the centre) nor the prawns in cream sauce (whilst the prawns were great the sauce was not to my liking), I greatly enjoyed the king prawns. They had a strong flavour (but not fishy) and were juicy, cooked to perfection. Though I normally eat prawns either on their own or in seafood sauce, I tried these in the two sauces provided (one tasted like peanut or sesame, and the other tasted quite a bit like the tangy salad dressing) the peanut/sesame sauce complimented the prawn whilst the salad dressing like sauce made for a very strange taste sensation!

My serving of scallops

The legs removed from the King Prawns

Dishing out a king prawn for each

Finally the fun of teppanyaki began, we were thrown a small piece of cooked egg, expected to catch it in our mouths. Some succeeded but most failed!

The line of egg (before it was sliced and thrown)

The chef began to play around a little at this point, insisting one diner move all the way back as he flicked the egg in the air (making it substantially harder to catch!) To the last diner he threw chopped up pieces of egg, amusing all but giving her no chance of catching it.

All this throwing food left very little egg in the fried rice! Once the rice was cooked, which really just involved a lot of mixing around (and salt), it was packed into bowls. We were handed a large bowl and tried to catch the bowl of rice in it. We had a higher success rate with this game!

Fried rice

A treat for the birthday girl

The only thing left at this point was the prawn legs, which had been sitting on the hot plate since the prawns were cooked and were well cooked and crunchy. These were passed out to anyone game enough to try them. In fact, they taste a little like chips (and only a bit like prawn legs!)

The chef finished up by showing off his upside writing in salt talent! He wrote a Happy Birthday message and drew a cake, even including the birthday girl's name and how old she was turning!

As with all Teppanyaki, he also wrote 'Thank You' upside down using the salt.

The finale

Overall it was fun night with some great food. The only criticism I had was that the performance could have used some more flair when it came to using the bottles and salt. Oh, and there was a tad too much salt used in each dish!

If you haven't tried Teppanyaki, it's definitely a great style of dining to try!

Din Tai Fung

After my initial encounter with Din Tai Fung over a year ago, I went back today and am glad I did!

My first trip with Jenna resulted in neither of being very impressed. Due to dietary restrictions we were unable to sample anything with pork (which is most of their range) and so missed out on the great things they had to offer and instead sampled the mediocre dishes and couldn't quite understand what all the fuss was about!

Working across the road from World Square enables me to try a large variety of take away foods on my lunch break. For months I've been trying to convince the office to get lunch from Din Tai Fung, their great reviews still appearing all over the place. Today the office (comprising of Chris) gave in!

Luckily we had a 'buy one basket receive a complimentary basket' voucher and so two baskets of dumplings cost us only $10.80.

We chose the pork dumplings and the pork and shrimp dumplings.
The latter was unusual as most Asian cuisines use prawn as opposed to shrimp but this truly was shrimp (bait like). Nevertheless, they were fantastic!

The case was smooth and light, not too chewy or sticky and inside the casing was a small amount of soup with the pork/pork and shrimp.

With a tad of soya sauce, the taste was incredible and the dumpling melted in the mouth.

I preferred the pork and shrimp whilst 'the office' preferred the pork.

Successful lunch!

Phoning and placing the order, I was able to avoid the often lengthy queue outside the restaurant and instead waiting 10 minutes, walked in, paid and picked up the order.

Without the voucher Din Tai Fung is quite pricey as there are only 6-8 dumplings in the box for $10.80 but with a voucher...excellent!