The Sydney Morning Herald logo
Advertisement

Bon Kura

Kirsten Lawson

Japanese fried chicken with horseradish dipping sauce.
Japanese fried chicken with horseradish dipping sauce.Jay Cronan

14/20

Japanese$$

It's not always easy to keep track of the plethora of Asian eating houses in Dickson, many of them long stayers and others that seem to come and go with the speed of a dumpling dinner. One of the most recent to open there is Bon Kura, in the middle of the Woolley Street strip, with a wide front to the street and big windows. It's a fresh spot inside, simple but with banquettes and comfortable chairs, bare, dark tables, wooden screens to separate out areas and big cherry blossoms painted on the walls.

Bon Kura is Japanese, not an adventurous, nor especially modern version, but the kind with which you will probably be familiar. The menu is long, as they tend to be, and take both sides of a large laminated sheet, working its way through sushi and sashimi, dumplings and salads, skewers, tempura, noodles, rice, hotpots and house specials. There are no surprises in this rather comprehensive line-up, but the food is enjoyable, and once you have a few tries at the menu and decide what you like, it's the kind of place you would return regularly for that dish.

For some, that will probably be the hotpot, an invention that combines comfort food with the sense that you're doing your body some serious good, and it's entertaining to boot. This is cooking my favourite way, no prep, no clean-up, no need to move from seated position. The shabu shabu hotpot ($50) arrives first as a gas cooker, then a bowl of light seaweedy broth set to heat on top, and alongside a plate of thick-sliced wagyu, corn cobs, radish, red and white cabbage, tofu, exotic mushrooms and noodles. You add the food to cook in the broth as you're ready – and no more than 10 seconds for the wagyu, the waiter admonishes us after noticing our forgetful mistreatment of this prized meat. It's all good, with sesame and soy-based sauces, and the tofu especially is delicious, somehow holding together in the broth. It's main and soup in one, and as I say, feels about as healthy and simple and balanced as you could hope dinner to be.

Advertisement
DIY dining: Wagyu, mushrooms and tofu for the shabu shabu hotpot.
DIY dining: Wagyu, mushrooms and tofu for the shabu shabu hotpot.Jay Cronan

It's also all you need for two, but being indecisive and a decent-sized group we stab at food across the menu, ordering with abandon. The food arrives in equally chaotic order, just as it's ready. Salmon sashimi ($15.80), fresh enough. Seaweed salad ($4.80), delicious and so translucently youthfully green you just know it's good for you. Karaage ($14.80), or what you might call Japanese chicken nuggets, satisfying, not greasy, and happily served with a bowl of creamy horseradish sauce and decent salad greens. Gyoza ($9.80), a plate of panfried fresh and good pork dumplings.

Looking back at the menu, I'm cursing myself for failing to notice the whole grilled eel served with a steamed egg, which I guess we would have just added to the growing pile of food, haphazard on the table. But we didn't neglect seafood altogether, and one of the most intriguing dishes to arrive is caramelised grilled Alaskan sablefish ($26.80), which has presumably flown a long way for our meal, but which is nevertheless hard to resist. I think this is the fish also known as black cod or butterfish, and butterfish is the word that best describes the flesh - rich and dense, slippery and excellent. Here, the thin fillets are sweet, sticky, heavily caramelised and very likeable.

A plate of four whole sardines ($19.80) is tougher work. They've been salt grilled and are served simply with a squeeze of lemon, nothing much more to it, which is good, except for the slight difficulty of having to eat the flesh off the little sardine bones, and it's quite dry flesh, presumably because of the salting.

Bon Kura chef Chin Pong Ma.
Bon Kura chef Chin Pong Ma.Jay Cronan
Advertisement

The waiter has urged us to order the "chef's special fried roll" ($12.80), and it's definitely a crowd pleaser, Japanese food of the okonomiyaki pancake or deepfried chicken kind, rather than the clear broth and seaweed salad my-body-is-a-temple kind. It's a kind of no-holds-barred sushi roll of prawn, crab meat, egg, cucumber and avocado expertly rolled together and deep fried then sliced into four succulent, gluey, chewy moreish rounds, topped with mayo.

Guy tataki ($19.80) is a purer dish – thin slices of highly marbled beef, just lightly seared, and served with a simple dipping sauce and slices of raw garlic, the garlic an uncompromising addition to a simple dish.

Service at Bon Kura is good – and fast. The kitchen is visible through a large open window, and there's a freshness in the set-up and approach here which is welcome. The menu could be cut back to considerably fewer dishes, allowing a stronger sense of focus. But perhaps this is a reflection of our own lack of focus tonight, with our indecorous approach to ordering.

Crowd-pleaser: Special fried roll with crabmeat, prawn, egg, cucumber and avocado.
Crowd-pleaser: Special fried roll with crabmeat, prawn, egg, cucumber and avocado.Jay Cronan

There's a list of about seven sakes, which is where we concentrate our drinking attention, and a couple of sparkling sakes as well, plus a brief, functional, well-priced list of Australian wine, which looks to be sensibly chosen as far as it goes. The test, of course, is would we return. And the answer here, certainly not everywhere, is absolutely. For the eel that we failed to order, a hotpot and a jug of sake, all of which would add welcome warmth to a Friday evening.

Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.

Sign up

From our partners

Advertisement
Advertisement