Melbourne Food Review: Izakaya Chuji, CBD (Again) + Good News

I bring awesome news. I have been neglecting this blog for a very tiring but joyous reason. I would like to announce a successful personal go-live (so to speak), the birth of our little daughter who has her very own hash tag #minikatspat on Twitter. She was born on 8 December 2010 at 5.55pm and my life has been turned upside down since.

The second piece of good news is that now that she is 2 months old, she finally lets me on the computer so hopefully this blog (and its sister blog) will be back to its active status once more.

Anyway, back to Izakaya Chuji, which is one of my favourite Japanese haunts and I have previously reviewed it. So I might just jump in and go through what Josh and I had on one of our Friday night date nights BB (before baby).

We managed to score the best seats in the house, in my opinion, at the sushi/sashimi counter. Arrays of tempting raw seafood and listening to the kitchen buzzing and staff shouting orders in Japanese just made the food taste that much more authentic.

We decided on ordering a few smaller, shared dishes that night. Our koroke (Japenese-style croquette) was a perfect blend of crunchy coating and creamy potato filling. Accompanied by crunchy cabbage slices and tonkatsu sauce, it passed with flying colours.

Our second dish was grilled beef tongue. We have never had beef tongue before and the texture of it surprised it. It was very thinly sliced and grilled. It had a really good chewy texture with a beautiful smoky flavour. Definitely would order it again.

I really can’t remember what this was. I have baby brain. Sorry. Think it was eggplant type thing. Possibly yaki nasu but deep-fried. What is that called?

And last but not least, katsudon. Best katsudon in Melbourne so far for me.

Head over to my previous post on Izakaya Chuji