January, 2009

Fusion seems to de rigeur in most eateries these days, so it’s refreshing to see it done with individuality. Japaz is a Japanese/Spanish tapas/wine joint in the eatery dense Sydney north shore suburb, Neutral Bay. Only open since May, 2008, service and atmosphere still needs time to fuse into the casual yet stylish image that the chef Hiro Takagi envisions, but the flavours and the range of dishes are unique, and the “idea” of this eatery is something Sydney has been desperately seeking, so if you’re looking for something different, Japaz is well worth the visit.

The “idea” being somewhere you can go to eat a little and drink a little, but not a restaurant or pub, which are the usual boring suspects. Most “sophisticated” countries have them, Spain of course has tapas, French and Italians do in-between meals beautifully in bistro, trattorie, bars, and the Japanese do otsumami or sake no sakana at swank counter eateries and the noisier izakaya, where you can enjoy sake and jugs of beer with a little nibble, or more if you want.

The prices at Japaz are not cheap however, and of course each dish is only small (please don’t expect uncouth Aussie portions) but if you go Tuesdays or Wednesdays, you can BYO as wine can set you back a bit. We are not wine or alcohol connoisseurs, but from a cursory glance at the wine and sake list, there seems to be a well honed range.

The night the two of us went, we shared 5 dishes between us, though 6 was the number suggested to us. We are both small eaters and we found we were full with our wine and a shared dessert, but Japaz is not the place to take pubescent boys after their rugby match.

We both loved the scallops served in the shell, it had a buttery soy sauce flavour, which was expertly executed. The crumbed and fried Portobello mushroom was not so well executed unfortunately, being a little oily so the juiciness of the mushroom was lost in the wet breadcrumbs. The choice of panko, Japanese crunchy breadcrumbs was a nice touch though. Chorizo sausage was delicious, and what tapas restaurant, even if it is Japanese fusion, can go without Spanish sausage. And that's the thing about Japaz, though some of the fusion combos sound eye catching, the best here are still the run of mill dishes, like Spanish sausage. Some of the dishes, like baked Meredith goats’ cheese, needed to be eaten with bread, and the handsome young waiters, though friendly and eager, were a bit neglectful on informing us. The traditional Spanish tapas serving dishes looked fine, but the dainty Japanese plates might’ve looked better with a Japanesey garnish.

On service, most Japanese managed restaurants in Sydney have average (often woeful) service, but the Japaz service was well executed.

The only gripe we had was the traffic noise. The doors open out onto the busy Wycombe and Military Road intersection in the summer, so if you’re hard of hearing, take your hearing aid. But then what busy restaurant isn’t noisy these days…I found the faux sandstone wallpaper a little disturbing, but that’s just being silly and picky.

The chef, who has an impressive resume (see website for details) is also involved in the management of Atomic Café across the road from Japaz. Kei has heard that it is a great little café, so we’ll be going there soon.

165 Wycombe Rd
Neutral Bay NSW 2089
Phone: 02 9904 0688
Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Lunch: Thursday – Saturday, 12:00 noon to 3:00pm;Dinner: Monday – Saturday, 6:00pm till late
Fully licensed and BYO (Tuesdays & Wednesdays)

Website: click here

For SMH review of Japaz in Sept, 2008 click here

For eatability review of Japaz click here  

by Masako Fukui, Kei's Kitchen

keiskitchen.com.au content by Masako Fukui is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.