Mino Japanese Restaurant / Zumbo Cake
This authentic, small Japanese restaurant sitting on Military Road just opposite Boronia House is my family's go-to restaurant for all our important occasions, namely birthdays and Chinese New Year. Every time we go, we opt for the Kaiseiki menu, which is an old Japanese banquet style menu - a degustation menu if you will. There is a choice of two - the Mino menu and the Goshu menu, and on every night except Saturday, a mini menu with slightly less food is also available.
The menu is six courses long, so I would highly advise that you go in with an empty stomach, as you will come out extremely well-fed. Apart from the selection between Mino and Goshu, you also choose a main course and a flavour of ice-cream for dessert.
The night starts with a syrupy shot of plum wine and a seasonal amuse-bouche, usually seared salmon.
The appetiser is Japanese style pipi in garlic soy butter broth. It is light and slightly salty, but the best thing about Japanese style seafood is that the seasoning never overwhelms the original taste of the seafood itself.
Next up is the sashimi and sushi dish. One of the best things about Mino is that the food is extremely fresh and of excellent quality. The grilled salmon, in particular, is melt-in-your mouth; and the special blend soy sauce paired with fresh oyster brings a lemony, tangy taste that really brings out the freshness of the oyster while taking away that 'fishy' taste some people find objectionable.
My favourite part of the evening is the assorted entree dish. The Mino menu option include a wagyu beef wrap sandwich with dengaku miso; tempura Japanese burdock root rolled in whiting; grilled orange roughy with spicy teriyaki sauce; green soba noodle soup in a coffee cup and deep fried soft-shell crab with green tea salt. Soft shell crab is one of my favourite foods to eat - the crabs are harvested when they shed their old shell, and before their new shell hardens, so you can eat the whole thing. Mino pairs lightly battered soft shell crab with green tea salt (an innovative mixture of matcha powder and salt) on the side, and it is simply delicious.
The Goshu menu's assorted entrees also come with green soba noodle soup, but everything else is different: you get grilled kingfish and mushroom with ginger and soy mayo sauce; tempure asparagus and duck with blue cheese miso; seared scallop salad with onion vinaigrette and tataki wagyu beef with ginger dressing. Tataki wagyu beef is blue steak sliced very thinly, and served with dressing. If you have issues with raw meat, this may not be the best choice for you; but the dressing is so delicious that I feel it's no more confronting than a sashimi dish.
Since both menu options are so delicious, I would recommend that you if you go with a dining companion, get one menu set each and share!
As mentioned above, for main course, you get a choice from a wide variety of dishes - you could have wagyu steak, or fish, or chicken, just to name a few. I chose the eel hotpot in Yanagawa style. It is a hot pot in which the main ingredient (in my case, eel) is cooked with scrambled eggs. It's my favourite way to prepare eggs - kind of like a mixture between scrambled and poached eggs, resulting in a light, silky texture.
After that food marathon, if you have not fallen into a food coma yet, it's time for dessert. Dessert at Mino is a four-component affair involving a morsel of soft chocolate in soybean powder (in a tiny sakura-shaped dish), yuzu (grapefruit) pana cotta, seasonal fruit (orange and mango / orange and melon), and your choice of ice-cream. My favourite is the dig and pistachoi flavour (pictured below), but I also recommend the black sesami and green tea flavour for a more authentic Asian experience, or the blood orange if you prefer a sorbet instead.
The occasion for this particular trip to Mino was my brother's birthday, so of course I had to get him a cake which would please his picky palette. The restaurant does not have extra freezer space, but they do have fridge space, so instead of opting for a Messina cake I got him the Aye Bro Chuck Munt cake from Zumbo.
It took me actually eating the cake to realise it's a choc mint cake, because exams have well and truly fried my brains.
Normally, chocolate mint is a distinct, pre-mixed flavour; however in this cake, the chocolate and the mint come separately in different layers. At the bottom is a chocolate mousse layer; followed by mint mouse; followed by chocolate again; with these mousse layers sandwiched between two biscuit discs; and topped with cream, lime jelly, mint leaves and hollow chocolate chunks.
Score: 4.5 / 5
An old favourite, I think my family will be going to Mino for many more family occasions. The restaurant is quite small, so make sure you book well in advance, particularly on weekends.
Cost: At $59/ pp, the Kaiseki menus are very reasonable for what you get.
Address: 521 Military Road, Mosman
Website: http://www.minomino.com.au/
The menu is six courses long, so I would highly advise that you go in with an empty stomach, as you will come out extremely well-fed. Apart from the selection between Mino and Goshu, you also choose a main course and a flavour of ice-cream for dessert.
The night starts with a syrupy shot of plum wine and a seasonal amuse-bouche, usually seared salmon.
The appetiser is Japanese style pipi in garlic soy butter broth. It is light and slightly salty, but the best thing about Japanese style seafood is that the seasoning never overwhelms the original taste of the seafood itself.
Next up is the sashimi and sushi dish. One of the best things about Mino is that the food is extremely fresh and of excellent quality. The grilled salmon, in particular, is melt-in-your mouth; and the special blend soy sauce paired with fresh oyster brings a lemony, tangy taste that really brings out the freshness of the oyster while taking away that 'fishy' taste some people find objectionable.
My favourite part of the evening is the assorted entree dish. The Mino menu option include a wagyu beef wrap sandwich with dengaku miso; tempura Japanese burdock root rolled in whiting; grilled orange roughy with spicy teriyaki sauce; green soba noodle soup in a coffee cup and deep fried soft-shell crab with green tea salt. Soft shell crab is one of my favourite foods to eat - the crabs are harvested when they shed their old shell, and before their new shell hardens, so you can eat the whole thing. Mino pairs lightly battered soft shell crab with green tea salt (an innovative mixture of matcha powder and salt) on the side, and it is simply delicious.
 | |
| 'Mino' assorted entrees |
The Goshu menu's assorted entrees also come with green soba noodle soup, but everything else is different: you get grilled kingfish and mushroom with ginger and soy mayo sauce; tempure asparagus and duck with blue cheese miso; seared scallop salad with onion vinaigrette and tataki wagyu beef with ginger dressing. Tataki wagyu beef is blue steak sliced very thinly, and served with dressing. If you have issues with raw meat, this may not be the best choice for you; but the dressing is so delicious that I feel it's no more confronting than a sashimi dish.
 |
| 'Goshu' assorted entrees |
As mentioned above, for main course, you get a choice from a wide variety of dishes - you could have wagyu steak, or fish, or chicken, just to name a few. I chose the eel hotpot in Yanagawa style. It is a hot pot in which the main ingredient (in my case, eel) is cooked with scrambled eggs. It's my favourite way to prepare eggs - kind of like a mixture between scrambled and poached eggs, resulting in a light, silky texture.
After that food marathon, if you have not fallen into a food coma yet, it's time for dessert. Dessert at Mino is a four-component affair involving a morsel of soft chocolate in soybean powder (in a tiny sakura-shaped dish), yuzu (grapefruit) pana cotta, seasonal fruit (orange and mango / orange and melon), and your choice of ice-cream. My favourite is the dig and pistachoi flavour (pictured below), but I also recommend the black sesami and green tea flavour for a more authentic Asian experience, or the blood orange if you prefer a sorbet instead.
The occasion for this particular trip to Mino was my brother's birthday, so of course I had to get him a cake which would please his picky palette. The restaurant does not have extra freezer space, but they do have fridge space, so instead of opting for a Messina cake I got him the Aye Bro Chuck Munt cake from Zumbo.
It took me actually eating the cake to realise it's a choc mint cake, because exams have well and truly fried my brains.
Normally, chocolate mint is a distinct, pre-mixed flavour; however in this cake, the chocolate and the mint come separately in different layers. At the bottom is a chocolate mousse layer; followed by mint mouse; followed by chocolate again; with these mousse layers sandwiched between two biscuit discs; and topped with cream, lime jelly, mint leaves and hollow chocolate chunks.
Score: 4.5 / 5
An old favourite, I think my family will be going to Mino for many more family occasions. The restaurant is quite small, so make sure you book well in advance, particularly on weekends.
Cost: At $59/ pp, the Kaiseki menus are very reasonable for what you get.
Address: 521 Military Road, Mosman
Website: http://www.minomino.com.au/
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