Toriciya, Cammeray

It's been a super busy 2 months for us and we've been guilty of neglecting this blog.  Christmas and new year seems like a blur and before we know it...we are in February!  Where did January go?! Thank you to those who asked us why we haven't posted anything for a while...keeps us on our toes and it's nice to know that people actually read these posts!  Here's to many more blog posts in 2015. :)

Our first post for 2015 is about a little local gem we discovered recently when our friends came to visit from HK.  Toriciya is a small, traditional looking sake and yakitori restaurant nestled in a quiet suburban street in Cammeray.  Unassuming and cosy, the restaurant surprises you with its high quality food and attentive service.

There are a lot of photos this post so I'm going to just let the photos do most of the talking.

Not being sake experts, we asked the in house sake sommelier to recommend a few for us to try.  He chose 3 different sakes for us, starting with the fruitest options to start.  It's a nice way for novices like us to taste and appreciate the different varieties of sake.

Baked savoy cabbage

To start, we had the baked savoy cabbage.  It looks like a simple dish but the aroma of the dish is intense and gets you salivating.  Not sure if it actually has truffle oil in it but we could definitely smell what resembles truffle before the dish even got to our table! 

Slow cooked Hokkaido scallops with white soy sauce

Next we had the slow cooked hokkaido scallops with white soy sauce.  The melt in your mouth scallops paired with the milder white soy sauce...pretty amazing!

Being a yakitori place, we were blown away by the freshness of their sushi and the freshness of the rice.  We've decided we are definitely going to go back to try their sushi omakase menu!

Crab cream croquettes

A little on the indulgent side...but who can say no to a home made crab cream croquette and deep fried tempura lobster? Although if you want to try as many things as possible on the menu, we would recommend you share one croquette between two.  

Tempura lobster

Agedashi Tofu

By this stage, our stomachs were starting to feel a little full but we hadn't even gotten to the actual yakitori...

Deep fried chicken cartilage

First up we had deep fried chicken cartilage. Crunchy and moreish - yum! 

Chicken meatballs

We then had the chicken meatballs - half in just a salt dressing and half in a sauce dressing.  These were a little disappointing overall - from our experience in Japan, we were expecting it to come with a raw egg yolk for dipping.

Pork belly

Moro miso Wagyu beef steak

The wagyu beef steak was perfectly tender and matched well with the sweet chutney dressing of some sort.

Chicken and shallot yakitori

Charcoal grilled eel

The eel was pretty special - not the usual frozen supermarket kind that you often find at Japanese restaurants.  We were told the eel came fresh from Tasmania; freshly grilled on a open charcoal flame, it had the tasty charred flavour with a nice texture - worth giving it a try, although for $12 - you only get one skewer so it's a little on the pricier side.

Chicken wings

Can't go wrong with chicken wings.  These had a charred crusty outside whilst retaining the moisture inside.  

Although it is on the pricier side of most non-fine dining Japanese restaurants, we found the food quality at Toriciya top notch.  Every dish was prepared with care and the service was also tentative and polite in true Japanese style.