Sashimi Shinsengumi — Restaurant in Sydney

(4.5 stars) The phone lines at Sashimi Shingengsumi open to the public just six times each year. In a frantic, one-hour time slot on a Monday evening, the tiny Crows Nest restaurant manages to book out their quota of twelve seats for every single Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evening in the next two months. After being thwarted once, I upped the ante by using a team of callers.

Success! A table for six is obtained in the tiny restaurant run by Shinji Matsui and his wife Tomoko. It’s a strictly BYO, cash-only business, so after warning each of my five guests to bring booze, mineral water and their $80 tithing in cash, I cross off the days until my omakase adventure.

Anticipation is a big part of dining, and the difficulty of securing a table here really adds to the excitement. We arrive early and mingle outside on the quiet street. Peering inside I can see two high, science bench tables surrounded by six bum-shaped stools. The rest of the undecorated space is taken up by a small kitchen and takeaway sushi fridge, where Tomoko will store your drinking supplies. All six diners face the board where Matsui-san will perform his magic, his time divided equally between the two groups.

We kick off with a pre-made appetiser of dressed oyster, grilled salmon, and an octopus tentacle topped with yamaimo (mountain yam) that's almost impossible to pick up with chopsticks. The main event is an almost non-stop procession of seafood, served piece-by-piece on beautiful, room-temperature koshihikari sushi rice. Exactly what seafood is dependent upon what has caught Matsui-san’s eye during his daily visits to the fish market. Some of the sushi, like our opening kingfish, arrives topped with little pieces of extra fish.

Unlike other omakase where condiments are strictly controlled by the chef, most of these nigiri pieces are served unglazed. This leaves the application of shoyu (soy sauce) and wasabi in the hands of the diner. I’m nervous about stuffing it up across creamy raw scampi and a tiny mound of rice enveloped by a carefully cleaved scallop.

By the time we get to a piece topped with layers of cooked sweet prawn, the tension is broken by someone asking if it’s okay to mix their wasabi and their soy. There’s no look of abject horror from our chef, so we relax into our grouper topped with glistening yellow herring roe.

Each piece, like the trevally, is prepared in front of us and placed by hand on our personal eating board. By the time we hit aburi salmon, kissed by the blowtorch at our table, my branded eating board is splattered with soy and littered with prawn tails. The gently torched fish is accompanied by a bowl of miso soup, accentuated with burdock and offcuts of the various fishes.

Presented to the table as lustrous deep red slabs, tuna is handled reverently by our chef, who pauses to allow us to appreciate its majesty. Our whole table coos over sea urchin roe (uni) briny and delightful without any need for accentuation. The blowtorch comes out again for twice-cooked saltwater eel (anago). Served glazed and wrapped around the sushi rice, it’s a unique presentation that’s fun to pop straight into your mouth.

Japanese otoro – tuna sourced from the fattiest part of the fish – is given the tiniest hint of caramelisation through the application of fire. There’s snapper with shiso and seaweed then aburi imperador (alfonsino) a firm-fleshed red fish that isn’t so popular in Sydney.

With all eyes on his knife skills, Matsui-san makes short work of garfish. He used their shiny skin to make them into bow-like masterpieces set off by pink boiled prawn floss. One of my favourite pieces is the triple-decker squid topped with salmon roe. The elegant cuts make the squid creamy and tender, as it tickles all corners of your mouth with tentacle-like precision. I hit my limit with yellowtail cut like crocodile-skin. Luckily tamagoyaki takes a bit of time to make, so I’m more than ready by the time Matsui-san has finished pushing his egg omelette around with...

Sashimi Shinsengumi - Omakase at Home

On one of the many forks of the main food strip of Crows Nest is a little take away store that satisfies your “Omakase”cravings whether we are in lockdown or not!

Highlights: “Omakase” at such a reasonable price! As dine-in Omakase prices have gone through the roof you can rest assure that Sashimi Shinsengumi has got your palate and cravings covered!

Review: Set - $50 (x2) Recommend. Absolute quality! The raw seafood selection highlights the clean and fresh taste of each individual fish. The Toro has always been an undeniable buttery centrepiece of the set whilst the surprise was how balanced the Mackerel was due to the ginger and chives that was subtly sprinkled on top - no fishy taste even with such an oily fish.

The Aburi components were glazed with a sweet and subtle sweet soy - Nikiri, ever so slightly. With a touch of the sauce, you could actually appreciate the fish and the eel rather have it over powered like many other stores.

It also wouldn’t be complete if I did not mention the rice which was the BEST part of it all. Being the highlight that combined everything together, the rice was perfect. Whether that be the seasoning, the form/amount and even the way it was cook, with each bite you can taste each individual grain of perfection.

Japanese Omelette - $7

Recommend. Just the way I like it! It’s not overly sweet like what you get in the side streets of Japan but has just the right amount of sweet-salty that you taste with each pillowy bite.

Salmon - $13 Recommend. Same like the above seafood selection, it is clean and fresh. It’s not milky smooth like you get with the belly of a Salmon but more towards the leaner side where you can taste the Salmon.

Bluefin Tuna Fatty Tuna - $26 Recommend. I always love picking Toro! It’s like “Where’s Wally?” to find the fattiest part just to make sure I get the creamiest taste and texture. Most of the pieces were well marbled however held a gradient from fatty to lean. Still an excellent cut and as all the quality produce by Sashimi Shinsengumi.

As amazing as the food was, why did I leave this with a 4 star review. I would actually rate it 4.5 however my take-away experience left me with a question mark. There is no doubt that the food was of quality however, some items like the Uni, Scallops and Toro had a fishier taste than expected. This left me to wonder whether it was because of my 45 minute ride home or just the seafood itself. So until I try it again, I will leave my rating accordingly and with the following tip!

Tips: Bring a wide esky to fit the round plate OR ask to seperate the Omakase sets so that it will be in smaller portions to fit in a standard esky.

Have a look at the display glass and order to your fancy. It provides you with a great variety and different cuts you normally don’t get elsewhere. King Fish head which is great in soup or grilled with a glaze of teriyaki sauce OR unique fish such as the Imperadar which is great seared/grilled.

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Will return! -...

If you’re mad keen on Japanese like we are, then you will most certainly want to check out Sashimi Shingensumi. But be warned, it’s not an easy feat to get a booking. Why? Firstly, the restaurant only seats two tables of 6 people. Secondly, the restaurant only takes reservations 6 times a year. This is part of the charm though, right? The phone line for bookings opens up on a Monday evening, in the third week in February, April, June, August, October, December. You cannot book via text or facebook messages. We had all hands on deck to make those phone calls one evening with about 5 people calling many times over the evening, we managed to secure a booking a month later.

6 of us visited the restaurant for their dining experience. For $80, you receive a multiple course omakase, which is a Japanese phrase that means "I'll leave it to you". This involves the Head Chef Shinji Matsui presenting a series of dishes including an appetiser, soup, sashimi nigiri and dessert.

Our appetiser is a small piece of tuna, cooked salmon and a huge oyster. Following this we get piece by piece of amazingly fresh sashimi.

There were so many courses it seemed as though we sampled every fish in the sea. Highlights include the bug, bass grouper, anago eel, samsom, Kampachi sushi with cooked snapper roe . Uni Sea Urchin Roe (chef’s favourite) and very polarising, the urchin roe is very rich and exibits a strong taste of the ocean. There were more; scallops, chotoro tuna, akami tuna, john dory with its liver, Shimaji striped mackerel, aburi king fish, salmon belly sushi, shima aji yellowtail mackerel. Our favourite was the scampi, this is the single best piece of nigiri we have eaten, super fresh with an amazing sweetness to the flesh. The rice is nicely seasoned and we also get soy sauce, and some of the sushi has a touch of wasabi too. I think we must have at at least 13 pieces when the chef says “one more” and we agree, receiving the raw squid sashmi which was expertly prepared with what seemed like a thousand small incisions, the squid was very tender with a creamy texture.

Chef moves between our table and the other as we rest our stomachs for more courses. The last dish was tamagoyaki, a rolled omelette made with dashi. It was incredible to watch chef’s care and technique, preparing all the layers of this omelette infront of engaged diners, this was truely a spectacle.

The restaurant is located in Crows Nest, just off the main strip. It is a small shop with a basic kitchen and two dining tables. They have a small open display fridge that sells sashimi to the daytime shopper too. We sit at the stools across from the chef watching him in action which is art in motion and ends up being displayed on the plate. Watching in awe as the food is expertly prepared, slicing the fish with precision knife work.

A wall poster shows all the fish on offer at Sashimi Shingensumi. All is super fresh and prepared beautifully. You can take both non-alcoholic and alcoholic drinks with no...