Prahran's secret Japanese clubhouse

Everyone loves a good back story, right? Stumbling upon Yoku Ono Ramen + Sake, a casual but assured Japanese restaurant down a Prahran side street, you'd never expect there to be such a rollercoaster hidden in its short history.

Owner Harry Curtis was a contestant on the 2014 season of My Kitchen Rules. After production wrapped, he promptly broke his neck in a beach diving accident, so any immediate plans for a life on the pans were shelved and replaced by months of rehab.

On the path of recovery, vexed by boredom, his father's business partner said he had an empty space that needed a vision. Curtis came up with the idea of a sandwich bar called The Bitter End. One of his regular customers was Tomoya Kawasaki (Japanese chef and owner of Wabi Sabi Garden, Wabi Sabi Salon and Neko Neko), who would always order the reuben.

After a while, Kawasaki suggested Curtis add a sushi offering alongside the sandwiches. After gaining a liquor licence, a new name and reworking the menu in intense collaboration with Kawasaki, Yoku Ono Ramen + Sake has arrived.

It's woodsy and intimate, with a kind of secret-clubhouse-hidden-in-plain-sight vibe – if you've been to Tokyo, you'll feel right at home. Green vines tumble from wall-mounted box planters, backed by sunray lighting splaying up the bricks. An open kitchen bustles by the bar and the mezzanine level hovers above, all chunky wooden stools and low beams.

The drinks menu is a hefty slew of Japanese-inspired cocktails like a yuzu margarita or the Kakurenbo with sake and jasmine tea, as well as more than a dozen sakes and a range of traditional Japanese wines and beers.

Kawasaki has created a tight menu of osozai (Japanese tapas) and a clutch of flavour-packed ramen.

You can start with some little drink-friendly bites such as edamame, gyoza and fried chicken before getting stuck into the osozai menu and optional sake-matching.

A light, lush vegetable platter features colourful bundles of yuzu pickles, miso eggplant and sesame kale.

There's crisp, tempura-battered soft-shell crab in yuzu ponzu sauce, sake-steamed pipis and delicate sashimi or, for something chunkier, wagyu beef that's been wrapped around thick pieces of carrot and asparagus and panko-crumbed. The roll is sliced into juicy wheels and lashed with the sweetness of teriyaki and curry mayo.

Then there's the ramen. A chicken stock is cooked over eight hours and soft, thin noodles are made especially for the restaurant. The pork belly is cooked three ways over 16 hours. A golden, just oozy bisected boiled egg bobs on the surface.

You can get the classic Yoku Ono, which comes with their straight-up chicken broth and your choice of free-range pork belly or tender slices of free-range chicken breast, or you can ramp up the flavour with the spicy miso version.

There's the Tan-Tan (sesame with spicy pork mince) and a light, vegetarian option, too (made vegan without the egg and with rice noodles), all presented against a dramatic backdrop of a sheet of towering nori. (If you're gluten-intolerant, the chef can switch out the regular noodles for rice noodles too.)

Poor Yoko Ono might never have won any popularity contests, but Yoku Ono Ramen + Sake just might.