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It takes a brave restaurant to proudly proclaim its allegiance to fusion food. So much culinary evil has been done in the recent past by underdone chefs thinking they could just chuck ingredients from serveral cultures together and be lauded maverick geniuses. Coriander, smoked salmon, banana and semi-dried tomato risotto anyone?

 

But it seems fitting that Orita's wholeheartedly and unashamedly embraces the term fusion. The beautifully kitted-out restaurant feels not so much dated as timeless, immune to the trends of the outside world as it concentrtes on its own path.

 

Owner-chef Hikaru Orita's path blends elements of Japanese cuisine with Western international hotel cooking, a culinary journey fraught with potential peril, but for the most part traversed safely here.

 

 

The menu can be confusing at first, particularly if you are expecting the standard Aussie Japanese. There is Sushi and Sashimi (Combination plate $39), prettily presented, garnished with flowers, certainly fresh and mostly good quality. But choose the assorted appetiser plate ($39-$59) and you'll get a smorgasbord - sushi and sashimi sitting next to prawn spring rolls, deep-fried fish cakes on skewers, slices of Atlantic Salmon Beeded with roe and cubes of tender beef wearing a splodge of dark, sweet sauce. It is tasty, if not particularly coherent.

 

A more traditional dish of deep-fried tofu served with a shiitake and abalone mushroom sauce ($15) was beautifully handled, with deep flavours and lovely, slippery textures.

 

Orita's famous stewed beef spare rib was the most confrontingly fusion dish of th night. The beef, beautifully tender after being stewed in a mixture of soy, mirin, sake and ginger, topped an incredibly busy plate that included bean shoots, creamy warm potato salad, turned carrots and mashed pumpkin, with the edge of the plate dusted in dried parsley. It was a hearty, comforting dish, though possibly not for purists.

 

 

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The Wine list is brief, reasonably prieced and appropriate, though serious wine folk may want to take advantage of Orita's BYO policy.  

 

  

In every great food city, I suspect, there is at least one great restaurant grievously neglected by inattentive food scibblers.

 

This is certainly the case in Melbourne where, for some years, a philosophical Japanese masterchef called Hikaru Orita has been quietly preparing miraculous food.

 

His eponymous restaurant, in the fine-food-free suburb of Toorak, is one for which weshould all give thanks and visit at every opportunity. 

 

So far, however, our doughty critics have misunderstood, misjudged or missed the place completely.

 

Over the past couple of years, there has been some excuse for this. Orita's is inside a building that has been extravantly refurbished.

 

But now the job is done, the building transformed, and Orita's - which has expanded on to a widened balcony - looks and tastes better than ever.

Last week I visited with a mate - an accomplished chef - and ate one of the best meals I have eaten in years.

 

We began with Orita's simple, signature appetiser - a dollop of perfect potato salad and a leaf of home-grown baby lettuce on an ethereal prawn cracker. Just that.

 

Next, a vegetarian dish hat had us baffled, intrigued and enchanted - a spinach-like vegie called konatsuna which had been organically grown, asis so much of the produce served here, by the master in his suburban garden. 

 

It had been dilicately steamed and tossed with minced, seasoned tofu.

 

Next came an equally bascinating dish of beef mince laced with hiziki seaweed with slices of bitter melon: the melon delivered a pleasing bitterness that was intantly balanced by the sweetness of the hiziki and th mince. Perfection.

 

On this frame, which had acquired the texture of a fine potato crisp but twice the flavour, rested a single, panfried fillet of the fish.

 

Now, I can think of no other chef courageous enough to serve this. But try it and you will return for more.

 

And then, nirvana: two richly flavoured slabs of heavily marbled Wagyu Beef unlike any meat I have tasted.

 

They had been sliced from a huge, aged fillet - a cut that is normally sold only for export to Japan.

 

Eating this beef, however, is something you should do at least once in a lifetime - ideally, prepared by Orita.

 

He may not ask how you like your steak because he knows there is only one way - quickly seared to a deep pink and served dry but for a sprinkled of ground, golden-roasted garlic.

 

Sauce would be unacceptable: the flavour of this meat is so rich and intense that nothing should be permitted to impair it.

 

And at Orita's, it doesn't - with the exception, perhaps, of the price ($99) which is hardly the chef's fault: the whole fillet from which it was cut cost him a hefty $600.

 

We Sat - dispatching globes of silky vanilla ice cream resting on mounds of mango cream and surrounded by a freshs sauce made from rare banana passionfruit that Orita's grows himself - trying to comprehend the meal we had eaten.

 

And wondering why this chef is not as celebrated as Tetsuya (Sydney) or Cheong Liew (Adelaide). He is certainly in their league.

 

Our conclusion was that Orita's modesty has somehow kept him out of the sight, out of earshot and off the radar of the ego-driven spokespeople of the eating and chattering classes.

 

But we can change all that....

 

 

Herald Sun, Food & Drink
13/Aug/2002

Whatever qualities it has - and we�ll get to them in a minute - Orita�s clearly hides its light under a Bushel.

Here�s yet another restaurant that�s hard to find. Determining in the dark which is Jackson ST�s No.4 is difficult enough. But Orita�s in Toorak is actually inside The Place shopping center�a small sign advertising the fact is beside the entrance stairs.

For all its apparent diffidence,considerable investment has obviousy been made in this sleek, comfortable venue in which so-calld modern Japanese cuisine is served.

You notice immediately the massive polished granite communal table and huge flower tub hewn from the same stone. You enjoy the warm symmetry of hardwood screens of vertical slats, timber strip flooring, solid grainy tables and elegant wicker-backed dining chairs.Illumination on tables is even and low, and spears of lily arrangements bath in highlights. Orita�s wordy and descriptive list offers plenty of flexibility.

Beginning with eight entrees�including sushi, sashimi and grilled duck breast marinated in miso paste�it moves on to two soups , two salads and a couple of rice dishes before nominating eight mains and five deserts. But this place also offers a fixed price ($68) 'omakase' seven-course dinner or, for the same price, a parade of �signature�Edishes.

Again for the same price, you can eat a fixed vegetarian menu, or choose a crayfish main course with your other menus and pay a supplement of $22. We chose the omakase dinner, which began�after a complimentary glass of bubbly and potato salad on a rice cracker�with two thin strips of Atlantic salmon cured in rice vinegar.

A small like of avocado oil lapped at the adges of the fish and a carrot and onion sauce like a light puree was between the fish. Many other elements too many�were present, including a violet flower, some salad greens, chopped chives and a dusting of paprika on the plate. But the fish was far too cold, in my view, even if flavours were clean and light. Next came a small chunk f longstewed spare rib of beef served in a sticky, translucent and tasty sauce on very fine potato puree. The meat was soft, tasty and tender, the potato having the texture of wasabi paste.

Very prettily plated, a meagre serving of sushi came next, its seafood component consisting of a single tuna sushi over excellent rice. (A snow pea over vinegared rice and two avocado apostrophes around sushi rice complemented.)

In a medium-sized glass teacup came highly reduced sweetcorn stock enhanced with milk that tasted, unsurprisingly, of sweetness and corn.

Constituting a dish no doubt, a single small and cold tomato that had been elaborately dried and marinated in canola oil followed. The tomato�s flavour was marvelous, but, again, I thought it would have been better at a temperature closer to the room�s.

The menu�s main course, if it can so be called, was a smallish fillet of ocean perch in another translucent sauce partnered by a disc of potato, triangle of pumpkin, length of carrot, a snow pea, small bowl of fried rice and one or two other sundries. Cooked through, but remaining moist, the fish itself was fine.

Ending the meal was a sculpted plate on which the major elements were a small globe of finely textured vanilla icecream and an intriguing peanut sauce of light but characteristic flavour and enticing texture.