Full disclosure – I was a guest of Sake restaurant. I believe this degustation is normally $115/head (and well worth it in my opinion!). As always, all my comments reflect my honest opinion and are my own.

Occasionally emails pop up in my inbox inviting me to events, or offering me products. I consider each email carefully – weighing up whether it’s in line with my blog and my philosophy. So, if McDonald’s were to invite me to a launch of a new menu item, I would probably decline. But if I see the words, seasonal, local, quality produce my eyes light up like a cartoon character and I hit reply just as fast as I can!

So it was when Caitlin invited me to preview Sake’s winter menu – a 9 course odyssey with 3 matching sakes for tasting purposes. Chef Shinichi Maeda was executive chef at Wasabi Restaurant and Bar in Noosa and has recently made the move to head up Sake in Brisbane.

Although Sake has been open since December last year I hadn’t yet had the chance to try it out. I am pleased to report I was not disappointed – every course was delicately flavoured and multidimensional. I don’t think there was a thing I didn’t enjoy. I already have plans to take J back to try it out (although if we want to get the full experience we may have to save our pennies and go for a special occasion!)

We began our meal with an amuse bouche of sashimi (I cannot remember the fish – I know it was like kingfish?) with a soup made from a type of taro.  It was a beautiful start to the night and a great tantaliser to the taste buds.  But it was only the beginning…

I am (slowly) coming around to oysters – I only tried my first a few years ago and I wasn’t convinced.  I’m a texture person and you have to admit the texture of oysters is … off-putting.  However, I enjoyed my Kumamoto style oysters and the beautiful fresh scallops that came with them.

Continuing the seafood theme we had three cuts of sashimi from Southern Blue Fin Tuna.  Again, I am new to sashimi, and I suspect this version may have spoilt me for other restaurants – the fish was so fresh and so tender.

One of the heroes of the night (that’s a bit of a nod to Masterchef right there…) was the venison – ever so slightly seared topside with crispy ginger chips, pickled pears (and I believe there were also kumquats?) with a plum and sansho pepper dressing.

Next was the Mooloolaba spanner crab with yellow fin tuna dumpling and shiitake mushroom and tuna marrow consomme.  Each dish had so many components but was a lesson on subtlty – no one ingrediant overpowered another.

The crab was followed by a galantine of quail, stuffed with yama-gobo and shitake mushrooms, coated with an orange-soy glaze and served with poached golden beetroot leaves and picked golden beetroot.  I loved how Shinichi used so many seasonal ingredients in the menu – and these tiny beetroots were beautiful and sweet.

The final main course was a piece of shar wagyu sirloin with a white sesame and ginger-miso emulsion, confit sato-imo (a type of taro) and onion bulbs.  I am convinced that you could confit a shoe and probably convince me to eat it (well, maybe not a shoe).  Of course, my camera choose this moment to die, so I don’t have any pictures to share of this amazing dish.   You’ll just have to order it yourself to see what it looks like!  With this course we were also served a winter salad featuring persimmon, kumquats, daikon, celery, minza, spinach, renkon and radish with ginger and guava dressing.  Apparently the plates were to share between two, but I’m pretty sure I owned my plate – sorry to whoever I was supposed to be sharing with!

Dessert was chocolate – apparently Shinichi is a big fan, and he certainly knows how to work the medium.  We were told a very cute story about what the “chocolate garden” represents – dark chocolat bavaroi is the soil from a pot-plant of his mother’s herbs that he destroyed with an errant soccer ball.  The quenelled white chocolate sorbet is the ball.  Special mention to the chocolate liqueur jelly which was like liquid gold.

My personal favourites were the venison and the eye fillet. A nod to the lotus root chips – I could eat a whole bowlful of them no problem!

The restaurant also has a great atmosphere and I love the private rooms – if you were having a special event they would be fantastic.

Thanks again to Shinichi, Mirium, Robert, Caitlin and the rest of the team at Sake for a fantastic night. I’ll be seeing you!

Sake restaurant
Level 1/45 Eagle St
Eagle St Pier
Brisbane
Ph: 07 3339 0999
Web: www.sakerestaurant.com.au