My partner and I had always been enjoying cuisines that are prepared traditionally with an authentic ambiance. Recently, someone had recommended my partner to Sharaku Japanese Restaurant and we decided to try it out.
Before that, I did a small research about the restaurant to get to know more about them. To my surprise, this restaurant has been operating since 1987, and have established themselves as one of the Auckland's finest Japanese restaurants. That makes me even more interested to try it out. Therefore, we went to try it out on last Friday for dinner.
Sharaku Japanese Restaurant is nestled quietly off Auckland's busy Queen Street. Should you not observant enough, you may miss the restaurant signboard. Or you may not even thought that this is one of the restaurant that provides authentic japanese food. You will know what I meant when you go to the restaurant yourself.
As we walk into the restaurant, we were greeted by one of their japanese staff dressed in kimono. We were escorted to our seats that had been reserved (we called in to make a reservation as we afraid that it may be full) and we were given a warm towel. Nowadays, I can hardly find any japanese restaurant that provides warm towel to their customers before each meal. Therefore, I am quite impressed.
However, there's some marks taken off from my expectations as they provide disposable chopsticks and without the chopsticks rest. To me, one of the criteria in a proper japanese restaurant is that they should provides a proper chopsticks and the chopsticks rest. A chopstick rest is used to keep the chopstick tips off the table and to prevent used chopsticks from contaminating or rolling off the tables.
We had ordered two Sharaku Special Course which are the sushi & sashimi set for my partner and tempura & chicken teriyaki set for myself. Every Sharaku Special Course includes an appetiser, miso soup, rice, pickles, salad and green tea.
We were first served with the appetiser, which is the mussels with stocks. Then followed by our Sharaku Special Course set.
Another little disappointment again when my partner was served with his sushi & sashimi set. There isn't any soya sauce saucer plate provided. We had to combined both our pickles, and use one of the pickles plate for the soya sauce.
As for the foods, their sashimi was very fresh and sweet too. A usual presentation of sashimi includes salmon, tuna and snapper. However, Sharaku sashimi includes salmon, snapper and scallop instead. In their miso soup, it didn't come with any seaweed and tofu, and it still taste as good with just a little of spring onions.
Then I was served with my tempura & teriyaki chicken set. Something caught my attention in the set, which was the teriyaki chicken. There's fried onion being sprinkle on top of the teriyaki chicken. Though the fried onion was not crunchy enough, the combinations of both the fried onion and teriyaki chicken was just awesome. As I eat, then I realised, there's no grated daikon being provided in their tentsuyu or in the tempura plates. The taste of tentsuyu was saltier as compared to the others.
As usual, we will always try to complete a meal with a taste of the desserts. The servings of the dinner was just right and we weren't too full. Therefore, we had ordered 3 desserts to end our dinner at Sharaku. The desserts were shaved iced with condensed milk and azuki beans, macha ice cream and daifuku with vanilla ice cream. Both the shaved iced and macha ice cream was rather ordinary. My partner and myself were both quite impressed with daifuku. The skin of the daifuku was very soft and fresh. We both thinks that it will taste so much better if is comes with green tea ice cream in it.
We had quite an enjoyable meal in Sharaku Japanese Restaurant though there's some expectations weren't being met. Overall was quite good and we will definately be back again some other time to try out the other dishes.
Sharaku Japanese Restaurant
75 Queen Street
Auckland City
Tel: 09 379 0483
(Opposite Loius Vuitton shop)
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