Soto, Ponsonby Auckland

My partner's mum birthday falls in the month of January. As usual, my partner will be buying his mum a meal for that special day. He had suggested two different restaurant for the dinner which are Soto and Meredith restaurant. However, my partner's mum had chosen Soto as she preferred Japanese food. This year I am lucky to be able to tag along for the dinner as I am still here in Auckland together with them.

We went to Soto on last Sunday for the birthday celebration. As mentioned by my partner, this restaurant is almost always full. Therefore, it's better that reservations are being made to ensure there's seating available for that day. We had made our reservations at 6.30pm, however we arrived the restaurant at about 6.00pm. As we are still early, there's not much patrons in the restaurant. If I didn't remembered wrongly, there's only like 3 groups of patrons were in the restaurant.

I was told that this restaurant was converted from a historic house to a restaurant. Hence, the restaurant was situated at the housing area of Ponsonby. The overall ambiance of the restaurant is very authentic.

Since there's 3 of us, we had order 2 "Tensin" Style Japanese Set Menus, which were the A Taste of Everything and Soto Signature Selection sets. In addition to that 2 sets, we ordered 2 sets of pacific oysters platter.

There are three different oyster's sauce in the pacific oysters platter. Each oysters were served in a cocktail glasses with ponzu citrus sauce, Soto special sauce and spicy sauce. Since there's a total of 6 oysters, each of us got to eat 2 oysters each. I managed to try the oysters with ponzu citrus sauce and Soto special sauce. The oysters weren't very big, but it was very fresh and sweet.

A Taste of Everything set menu consists of:-

• Japanese tapas: Fish panko katsu, omellete and beef karaage
• Soto dressed Japanese green salad
• White miso soup
• 6 pcs of Sashimi, 2 sushi rolls and 2 pcs of Nigiri
• Tempura vegetable, prawn, and fresh market fish
• Manuka honey infused chicken teriyaki
• Fillet of pork "Kushiage" skewer
• Green tea ice cream and green tea

Meanwhile, Soto Signature Specials consists of:-

• Japanese tapas: Fish panko katsu, omellete and beef karaage
• Soto dressed seafood salad
• Sansai Consomme
• "New style" white sashimi and tuna tataki
• 2 pcs of Nigiri sushi dressed and 2 pcs of rolled sushi
• Paradise prawn filo tempura
• White Warehou "Saikyou"
• Manuka infused chicken terriyaki
• Black sesame ice cream and green tea

Japanese tapas: Fish panko katsu, omellete and beef karaage

Soto dressed Japanese green salad

6 pcs of Sashimi, 2 sushi rolls and 2 pcs of Nigiri

Tempura vegetable, prawn, and fresh market fish & White Warehou "Saikyou"

Soto dressed seafood salad

"New style" white sashimi and tuna tataki & 2 pcs of Nigiri sushi dressed and 2 pcs of rolled sushi

Manuka honey infused chicken teriyaki, Fillet of pork "Kushiage" skewer & Paradise prawn filo tempura

Overall of both the "Tensin" Style Japanese Set Menus were very good. The dishes that caught my attention are the paradise prawn filo tempura and manuka infused chicken terriyaki. It was my first time seeing tempura with filo pastry, and it was very crunchy and flaky yet not oily at all. Meanwhile, the manuka infused chicken terriyaki was good too. Because it is infused with manuka, it's not very sweet. The taste both the saltiness and sweetness of manuka blends well totally with the chicken terriyaki. Besides, there's also fried onion being sprinkle on top.

When we were done with our sets, we ordered an additional dessert taster platter of three. We chosen the plum wine sorbet, japanese vodka "Momo shochu" poached spring fruits with kanten jelly and Japanese cheese cake. The first one that I had tasted was the plum wine sorbet. The first mouth tasted like cough medicine. However, after the second mouth, it taste so much better. Of all the three, I like their cheese cake the most. I would say it's a mousse cheese cake and the texture is really smooth that it melts in your mouth immediately.

The overall experience of Soto restaurant food and ambiance was really good. When my partner was paying the bill, he saw a flyer on the counter that promoting another new subsidiary opening of Soto restaurant, which is the Cocoro. It is a restaurant with different concepts where it serves only tapas or degustation meal. We will definately find a day to try it out and I will definately blog about it again.

Soto

13 St Marys Rd,

Ponsonby,

Auckland.

Phone: 09 360 0021