Newly opened Chaki Chaki in Braddon offers high end Japanese cuisine from chef, Yujiro Takeda, who brought us Tasuke. I’ve been stalking the website for a few weeks and I must say the website alone is beautiful! Chaki Chaki predominantly offers a $60 or $80 set degustation with a few tapas on the a la carte menu. When I found out they had $35 lunch specials, a work colleague and I headed over to try it out. Located upstairs in the Ori building, there’s a large balcony filled with tables and chairs overlooking Lonsdale Street. The inside is modern and clean decorated with thin timber slats and ropes.
It’s spacious with some stools along the front counter and an open kitchen on the other end which allows you to peek in at the chefs.
We received complimentary green tea to start with and sipped on this while waiting for our lunch.
There was a choice of 4 lunch specials ($35) including a vegetarian special ($25). I decided to try Yujiro’s Chirashi set with sashimi on rice. This took about 30 minutes to arrive which was strange as we were the only 2 people in the restaurant! I’m putting it down to greater care in presentation. When it did arrive, my chirashi did look colourful and beautiful.
My chirashi had thin slices of salmon, tuna, kingfish and octopus sashimi which were neatly arranged around a mound of steamed rice. There was also some sakura denbu in between the rice and the sashimi giving a sweet yet salty added flavouring to the seafood. I wanted more of it. The fish roe was the stand out for me – these were the most flavoursome fish roe I’ve ever had. Just one roe was bursting with a juicy and long lasting sweet yet savoury flavour.
My work colleague ordered the tonkatsu set which came with crumbed pork loin and salad. I was impressed with the thick crunchy batter. The pork loin was very chunky, you definitely needed a knife to cut through all that meat.
Our lunch specials came with miso soup and an appetiser each. Mine was the choi sum with mushrooms, while my work colleague was provided with the chilli octopus and prawns.
Although our lunch was tasty, I can’t overlook the fact that it was very expensive. The chirashi was probably a good deal with all that sashimi – about 3 slices of each type of seafood. However my work colleague didn’t think the tonkatsu was worth the $35. I’d be interested to see what the degustation would be like – you will find the degustation menus on their website. As with most Japanese restaurants, service is extremely polite and professional.
Chaki Chaki is open for lunch and dinner Tuesday to Sunday. It is located upstairs in the Ori building on Lonsdale Street in Braddon. Take the stairs at the front of the building which are behind an automatic sliding glass door.
Foodgasm 7/10
Value for money 6/10
Service 8/10
FPJ score 21/30
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