Head starter

TABLES
George Megalogenis finds his local Japanese restaurant quite a knock-out
August 20, 2005

I BLAME Bruce Springsteen. I had Thunder Road on the headphones that afternoon. "The screen door slams," I heard the Boss say for probably the 1000th time as I cycled, oblivious to the traffic beside and behind.

The final ecstatic bars of Thunder Road are still buzzing in my subconscious as we arrive for an early dinner at Aya, one of Melbourne's best Japanese restaurants, and a personal favourite. Our party totals seven, five adults and two children.

We have booked a tatami room to contain the noise. "The screen door slams." And so it does. Moments before the entrees are due, the screen that seals our booth from the others topples without warning onto our table. I catch the contraption on the top of my head, then, in shock, straighten my shoulders so the thing tilts backwards to the floor at a 45-degree angle.

This deft, daft manoeuvre spares the drinks from toppling like dominoes. Ouch. Our party now comprises four adults and three children as I prepare to bore the remaining adults with the Springsteen coincidence.

The staff are suitably aghast and lift the screen off me. They apologise. This has never happened before, they say. But I am more amused than miffed. My 2m-high assailant didn't maim because it was the paper'n'wood variety. Safe in earthquakes, and in restaurants, I can happily report.

Aya is located at the sunlamp-and-pearls end of High Street, Armadale, the suburb next to Toorak for those not familiar with Melbourne's wealth belt. The restaurants on this block are outnumbered by tacky art galleries, human rotisseries that call themselves tanning studios, and bridal shops. The Presley impersonators who strut these pavements model themselves on the wife, Priscillicon.

Aya has changed its menu since our last visit, so we can't order from memory. We negotiate a spread of tastes for entree. Multiple plates of tsukemono, Japanese pickles ($5.50 a serve), miso soup ($4 each), pork and vegetable gyoza ($12), horenso, blanched spinach with sesame dressing ($7.70), agedashi tofu, deep-fried bean curd with soya dashi sauce ($8.80) and gyu maki, vegetables wrapped in thin slices of beef ($15.50).

The chopsticks bob and weave like stilted clowns at a Moomba parade. I can't vouch for all the dishes, because some have been gobbled up before I get to them. When Japanese food is placed before this mob, the danger for the one that does too much talking is starvation. The miso and the pickles are delicious but the beef is the highlight. It is lightly cooked, somewhere between carpaccio and charred, but doesn't dominate the filling.

Aya pours a really good Asahi beer ($7). Normally, I'd have just the one then switch to wine with the mains. But this Asahi has me hooked. A second, then a third glides down the throat. Beer goes well with food only if it is poured into a frosted glass – a film of ice, not water, should coat the glass. Aya is one of the few restaurants that appreciates the difference.

For mains, we share a mixed tempura of seafood and vegetables ($18.50 a plate) and one of the new dishes on the menu, a sushi roll of tiger prawns and Japanese basil ($15.50).

Scrub the previous thought about the beef roll; the sushi roll is the dish of the night. It is sliced into six bites, with the prawn tail sticking out at the end of the last piece but, thankfully, no head on the first. The prawn meat is tender and spicy. A daub of wasabi and soy gives it an extra kick. Can't wait to have it again.

The two children, Bert and Kathy, have a plate each of cold buckwheat noodles ($12.50), as well as a bit of everything else, and some homemade lemon squash ($4 each). The other adults have Asahis and glasses of Framingham sauvignon blanc ($7.50). We are buzzing.

The children have been quiet, mostly, because the food has turned them into contented little human incinerators. When Bert devours his final clump of noodles, he calls the party to attention.

"Hey, watch me drink the sauce." He has his straw poised above the dipping soy. No one discourages him. He slurps as he smirks. I'm tempted to applaud, but I imagine his mother, an old friend, would slam a fist into my shoulder. That would surely hurt more than a toppling screen.

Source: George Megalogenis 2005, "Head starter", The Australian News, 20 August, 2005