St. Kai — Restaurant in Sydney

I am surprised by the existence of this cafe.

I started with the Ramen that was R&D , lime and peanut miso with egg. Followed by the Ghost in the Shell cold brew set.

The order of consumption is important if you want to enjoy umami properly. Sure you can go in for food and drinks and chat like most people. But if you want to be silent and enjoy flavours, this is the place to be.

The Ramen seems small at first, I thought I'd need to order more. The lime cut through the peanut miso and fried shallots, Everytime I chopstick'd up a small roll of noodles, I'd bite into the lime. That ramen works. It's not pad Thai, it belongs to Ramen. I was utterly surprised this worked and how well balanced it was with the egg.

But my journey was only halfway.

Even though I was adequate, there was still 15% of hungry felt. It's a grey area in dining where you don't want to leave the shop feeling hungry but you know that if you order something else you'd be over full, ie 120% full, which is a worse off feeling.

$15 for ghost in the Shell experience, cold brew coffee with a hot tea and cold tea using coffee flowers and hibiscus 🌺.

Took me a moment to figure it out. One small sip from the cold brew coffee as the base, then normal sip from either the Hot tea or cold tea, after that sip go back to base with the cold brew coffee. After that it was a choice of whether I want hot or cold. The flavours highlighted and exploded both coffee and tea using this method.

One moment you get a dark raisin fruit from cold brew then moving to bright stone fruit with the hot tea. Then moving back to base with cold brew again, this time floral which then becomes floral rose and hibiscus with the cold tea. The flavor dances around if you sit the tea at the back of the tongue a little longer.

I'm impressed by the pallet of the chef and barista

This ending helped me get to 100%. The perfect send...

Mrs Tofu and I felt the need to revisit this lovely suburban gem to enjoy their coffee flight; "One Punch Kohi" once more. The barista's selection of House blend latte, Ethiopian espresso and batch brew, followed by the delicately sweet uji matcha latte were good company whilst we waited nearly an hour for our food to arrive.

Saturday lunch service tested the staff and little mistakes and delays caused a few grumbles from some fellow patrons. I'd recommend coming before 12pm if food is on your mind. To be clear; the staff are lovely and apologetic.

The tantamen ramen was slurp worthy, the broth not too heavy and sadly too small to share more than a mouthful from Mrs T.

Cheeseburger donburi was odd to start and dominated by the special sauce. Filling and rich but too one-note in flavour for me.

For me, the pork katsu rice bowl is the winner with each aspect hitting the mark. From the oozy poached egg, crisp fried cutlet to the sides of cabbage and pickled ginger. After a judicious stir to soak the rice waiting patiently below; every mouthful was an explosion of umami goodness.

We'll have to come back again to explore the rest of the interesting drinks menu away from lunch...

This was a cute little japanese inspired brunch spot 🥺 their menu is pretty short and this honestly made making food decisions really easy!

The mushroom udon WAS SO GOOD and is defo a must try. It was bouncy and chewy, so well seasoned and you could taste the fire in the mushrooms. The umami was like SMACK HELO IM HERE 👋🏼 and the toast omg, the bread was SO FLUFFY AND CRISPY?!!! Like hi I’d like to order a pack to bring home haha. It just went so well with the eggs and the salty fish roe pops. SO GOOOD.

I will say the ramen was a bit of a miss for me, it was really nutty but I felt like it was missing that classic depth that tonkotsu ramen had. The onsen egg was also over cooked and basically soft boiled. The coffee was so good and jelly was yummy and chewy (a bit pricey for what it is though) but the ichigo latte tastes like watered down oak milk… so wouldn’t really...