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A master of modern Japanese returns to the scene with Ivy’s Teppanyaki, writes Nick Dent.
In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure dome decree. Justin Hemmes’ Ivy complex may be grandiose and unfinished, but resemblances to the Xanadu of Charles Foster Kane end there.
Instead of a ‘keep out’ sign there are friendly hostesses waving you past wheelbarrows and scaffolding into a lift, which opens onto a scene of rock-star excess.
Teppanyaki is wedged between the extravagant bars Ivy Lounge and the Den, both brimming with well-heeled revellers. Waiters are young, female and wrapped in mini-kimonos that only just make it past the groin area. I almost expect them to say: “Welcome to Japan, Mr Bond”.
We’re here at the invitation of chef Shaun Presland, a very old friend; in fact, I have a feeling I might have been present the first time he ever got drunk (the less said about that the better).
So this week’s review will be far from impartial, but I’d be in dereliction of duty if I didn’t tell you about Presland’s fabulous modern Japanese cuisine.
Presland masterminded Sushi e at another Hemmes establishment, The Establishment. Then he went to the Bahamas to open a Nobu at the Atlantis resort. Tipped to head up Nobu Melbourne, he instead came back to the Hemmes clan to expand on his stunning repertoire of sushi and sashimi with a style of teppanyaki as rich, sexy and cosmopolitan as the Ivy’s clientele.
First up comes an appetiser we’re more used to seeing in Thai restaurants: five betel leaves, topped with blue swimmer crab meat, chives, a slice of chilli and lime ($25). This pan-Asian taste combination is followed by melt-in-your mouth snapper sashimi ($25) rubbed with garlic and lightly seared with hot sesame and olive oil. Both use Presland’s pet ingredient, ponzu (lime and soy) sauce.
A spicy salad of ocean trout sashimi ($28) features strips of hasuimo, a strangely delicious, celery-like vegetable. Crispy salt and pepper Balmain bug tails ($45) are electrified by a hot Peruvian-style jalapeno sauce, an idea Presland picked up during his Nobu stint.
Having inhaled all of the above, we then take a deep breath and plunge into some teppan-grilled mains.
Barramundi ($34) cooked skin-side down is superb with its shaved daikon and ponzo dipping sauce. A 100g Wagyu 9+ rated striploin ($57) comes with a stir fry of buckwheat, soy beans, and shiitake, oyster and inoki mushrooms. It looks like nothing on earth and is one of the most exciting things I’ve eaten this year.
A prawn and cuttlefish pancake ($15) is like a traditional okonomiyaki but tricked up with a topping of fresh chilli. It almost finished us off, but we squeezed in a mini Wagyu hamburger each ($28 for five) that Presland invented after seeing the shiny, generic burgers of White Castle outlets in the US.
The ingredients are so fine Ronald McDonald would weep.
Somehow I am still able to ingest half a piece of unnaturally smooth green tea cheesecake ($16) before slouching home using a method that is not so much walking as controlled falling.
That bottle of 2006 Shadowfax Adelaide Hills Pinot Gris ($60) may have had something to do with that, of course.
Yep, Justin Hemmes’ vision of Xanadu sure gets the catering right. Now all he needs is Olivia Newton-John on rollerskates.
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