RAKU review

Raku leaves us both impressed and a little flummoxed. The place is immaculate. The set-up, furniture, tableware and the like, is gorgeous. The staff are swish; the host at the door is polished like a poster, our waiter is opinionated, the person over the bar is conversational. The customers, even, are dressed for a night out, and look poised to land an air kiss. Perhaps we're overstating the feeling at Raku, but swank it is, even slightly corporate, and perhaps the reason we're flummoxed is because for us the beauty of the Japanese approach is its essential spare humility.

Raku does have a beautiful aesthetic, in the rough bench top, the floors done with skinny grey tiles, the lovely little wooden tables and wooden stools with pale tan leather seats. Bamboo lines the ceiling, there's a row of private booths and a row of sushi bar seats, with a couple of immaculate sushi chef working behind the bar.

We order a little randomly across the menu, anxious about missing out on so much that sounds so good, and then strangely the food arrives all in a pile, crowding out our small bar space.

Age senbei, finger truffle rice chips with oyster mayonnaise ($18) are confusingly described, but turn out to be hot chips, cut precisely in thin rectangles, and made of rice, or rice flour, with truffle oil. The texture is fantastic, chewy and dense, like a fried rice cake in chip shape, and satisfying with funky,salty and creamy oyster-flavoured mayonnaise, a great bar snack.

Nasu dengaku, deep-fried eggplant, black miso and tama miso, pinenuts ($14) is spectacular looking, an eggplant sliced in half, with the flesh scooped and mixed with miso - then reinstated, half white, half black. It looks good and tastes strong and dark, marmitey, simple, thick and creamy.

Aged tofu tempura, with wasabi barley miso and avocado salsa ($13) are bites of fried tofu, dense, which is perhaps this is the consequence of being "aged", delicately handled  and piles with avocado and miso sauce, and has plenty of heat, presumably from the wasabi and chili flakes. They're good, hot wobbly bites.

Unagi foie gras, Taiwanese unagi, foie gras cream, dried yukari, shiso ($12.50) is two little pieces of nigiri, luxurious and pretty expensive, but then we're getting eel and foie gras in one crazy bite.

Spicy maguro, South Australian tuna, tenkatsu, chives, takuan, cabbage ($15) is maki rolls, crisp rice on the outside, tuna on the inside, loads of heat. They're really good.

We insist on ordering the tebasaki, duck fat confit chicken wing with smoked miso butter ($14) in the face of insistent advice from the waiter that our alternative idea is better. It's the duck fat that has us hooked, and it gives these little piles of slippery chicken an incredible mouthfilling succulence. It's very rich, very filling, and who would have thought a chicken wing has so much meat when you pull out the bones?

We ask for advice on a sake and the guy points to gingo sake which we agree to before noticing the price tag - at $48 for 180ml, it's probably not the way recommendations should be given in a restaurant. Not that we're unhappy with the result, we love the sake, and it comes in gorgeous gold sake cups which make it feel all the more excellent.

The chocolate fondant ($16.50) is restauranty, with the pool of liquid chocolate sitting in a dark chocolate crater is, warm and rich with "sticky miso caramel", and chocolate ice cream, and the option also of a whiskey version.

The yuzu sorbet ($6) is icy, simple, fresh and beautiful, reminding you of cumquat. On another visit, I'd be working my way through these Japanese inspired ices, with flavours such as kalamansi and shiso; or black sesame; and matcha.

Chef Hao San, who comes from Tokonoma in Sydney, has brought a new kind of Japanese dining to Canberra - sleek, super modern in the drinks and set up, quite purist and very good, although the style won't suit everyone.