Oushou — Restaurant in Melbourne

4.6

This is a lovely restaurant that serves superior modern Japanese food. Everything works beautifully here. The restaurant space is lovely, only seriously good quality ingredients are used, the dishes are superb in every way, the wine list is great, the service is lovely. It all works superbly. We really enjoyed it.

We began with a superb rose from Pfeiffer of Rutherglen and continued with that wine throughout the dinner. This is a wine and a winery we know well from many past trips to the north east. The selection is indicative of the quality on the thoughtfully composed wine list. It’s not a long list, but it’s all good stuff.

Our first dish was the salmon tataki. This is a spectacular dish. The salmon is very high quality served with a sliver of chilli on top. The salmon melts in the mouth. We adored this dish and remarked that we’d come here just for this alone. It’s as good an entree as you could order. Next we had a delicately cooked scallop with caviar and ginger. It was small, two scallops only, but beautifully presented and very good.

Next dish was the deluxe sushi and sashimi. This was a stunning selection. Spectacular even. Beautifully presented. This kitchen knows their stuff. We loved every piece on this platter. Everything was good but the prawns were the stand out. We also had The Ohsho signature rolls. These too were amazing. They are beautiful rolls. They're are excellently assembled, delicate and enticingly presented. They pack a punch too with some lovely chilli flavour. This was unexpected but it adds wonderful length to the taste of the rolls.

I thought the tempura was good. The batter was beautifully light on the prawns but maybe didn’t work as well on the vegetables. The miso black cod was good to finish but was probably one dish too many. Nevertheless, I still had to try the black sesame ice cream which I love. The one here is a beauty.

We loved this restaurant. It’s just across from the Rivoli cinemas. How I wish I’d come here after a movie a few times rather than shuffle to the more prosaic restaurants directly across from the movie house.

A couple of other observations. It’s a lovely long warm long modern space here. We loved the predominant grey throughout which is very stylish. There’s nice decoration here as well. Overall the space is excellent and it felt contemporary, warm and inviting.

My compliments to whoever chose the playlist here too. I never thought I hear old blues standards in a sleek modern restaurant. You’d think Robert Johnson and Japanese food wouldn’t go together, but curiously they do. There were other great music selections on the night as well. The music choices were unexpectedly inspired.

Our servers were excellent here. Beautifully efficient and very gracious. They did a marvellous job with us and everyone.

We had a wonderful time. The restaurant succeeds in every way. We will definitely return.

Our sincere thanks to Ohsho for the invitation...

Ohsho means king in Japanese and we certainly ate like one. Each course was exceptional in every way; fresh, high quality, flavourful ingredients stunningly presented- what could be better than that?

We started with salmon tataki which was beautiful with finely sliced ginger atop it. It arrived beautifully plated and really set the scene for the visual journey we were about to undertake. Next was the tataki in ponzu. This gorgeously tender beef was lightly seared and had a vibrant pink colour which is just what I like to see.

We had the ohsho roll next which is somewhat their signature sushi dish. Bright and colourful this offered a selection of different things some with spicy sauces and others sweet. My favourite on here was the tuna but it’s a good dish to sample a bit of everything.

If you really want to sample a whole lot might I suggest the outstanding sushi and sashimi platter for two. This was pretty much my favourite sushi board of all time. It boasted two fabulous tempura prawn rolls and some crunchy salmon and avocado pieces. Note there is wasabi underneath the nigiri pieces which is traditional and something I’m not personally a fan of so if wasabi is no friend to you give the staff a heads up. We were so very impressed with this I would strongly recommend it as a must order.

After eating two appetisers and two sizeable sushi dishes we then had some entrees (entrees!), the chicken and veg gyoza and miso eggplant. Honestly this menu is so varied and is comprised of so many delectable items it was extremely difficult to chose what to order. The little dumplings were packed full of bold flavours and while the eggplant was more subtle it was probably one of the most innovative ways I’ve seen eggplant presented.

Our excellent waiter recommended the spicy calamari though once again there were about another ten things that tempted. You are certainly spoilt for choice here. And with an ideal location directly opposite the cinema this is the perfect pre or post movie...

I would give 3.5 stars if it were an option.

The Sushi here was decent with fresh sashimi. I would say it’s on the moderately expensive side. Beef tataki was a very marbled beef and had a nice flavour. They used kewpie sesame sauce on top which is tasty but can be a bit over powering. Fried rice was okay. Dessert was very disappointing and expensive and put a sour taste on the whole thing. The dessert labeled sticky rice dessert with ice cream for $13 is a single mochi ball cut into four pieces the ice cream was melting on the plate and had ice crystals suggesting it had been freeze thawed a few times. Also very ramshackle plating with some whipped cream smeared on the plate, a cut up strawberry and some broken up pieces of a seaweed rice cracker. They would do better to just have the mochi ball in a cute little dish so you can appreciate it while it’s still intact… also change the price to $8 unless you increase the number of mochi balls. The green tea mousse is a very heavy cream based mousse.

Staff were busy which is fine but some staff really lacked attention to detail and didn’t offer the service you would expect from somewhere marketing itself as a nice restaurant.

I think you will have the best experience here if you just focus on...