There’s a sushi restaurant in Chatswood that we’ve been trying to check out for ages now. It was recommended to us by a friend as a good place to go. So far, every attempt to visit it has been thwarted by various unexpected events. This most recent time, it was closed. On a Wednesday night! There was a little note posted on the door, but we weren’t close enough to read it, so circumstances remain a mystery.

Instead, we found ourselves trawling Artarmon for a place to eat and ended up at a Japanese restaurant called Wakana. It’s a simple, homely little restaurant where you can grill your own meat, or choose from the a la carte menu. We picked the latter option, and ordered Wagyu beef tataki, teriyaki salmon and tonkatsu pork.

Almost immediately after ordering, frosted bowls of complimentary salad arrived at our table. A promising way to start. The salad consisted of iceberg leaves, with some seaweed and a yellow garlicky dressing. Very refreshing. Next was the beef tataki garnished with sliced shallots, a mountain of raw onion, and drizzled with the same yellow dressing. This dressing also appeared on the shredded cabbage next to the tonkatsu pork.

Now I actually quite liked this dressing, but it started to get a bit much after awhile. (It brought back memories of eating at Interlude in Melbourne : one of the earlier dishes in the degustation we had, was baby squid with an overdose of garlic sauce, garlic chips and garlic flowers). After all that sauce, the sliced onion was looking a bit lethal. “Don’t you dare eat any of that onion .. or it’s the couch for you tonight!,” I warned B. He contemplated me for a moment, then picked up a heaped serving of the onion with his chopsticks and shoved it into his mouth, chewing defiantly. I tried to give him the evil eye, but it started to water from the onion fumes.

I concentrated on the salmon instead, which was cooked through but still moist. The sauce was a little too sweet for my liking, but otherwise it was all I wanted from a dish listed as teriyaki salmon. The pork was nice and crunchy on the outside, and moist and meaty on the inside. Curiously, both the pork and salmon dishes also featured a small serve of elbow macaroni. Not sure how it all fits in, but I ate it anyway.

Wakana is not about to usurp any restaurant in my personal list of Japanese favourites, but it serves fairly decent, straightforward food which you might happily drop in for, if you happened to be in the neighbourhood.

Wakana – Yakiniku Restaurant
Broughton Road
Artarmon 2064.

Another happy Sunday acquisition. Sunday is when the stork comes to our balcony, delivering new baby plants to add to the family. This time, we got chocolate mint, pineapple sage, and sorrel. The sorrel looks so delicate, like it just woke up and pushed out of it’s bed of soil. I can’t wait for it to grow a little bit more. It’s hard to get this herb at the local fruit ‘n’ veg shops, and I’ve been hankering to make Elizabeth David’s sorrel sauce, to have with some pan-fried fish and potatoes.

Even less heard of, is the pineapple sage. It truly smells of pineapple, and when you put a leaf into your mouth, all you get is the taste of pineapple, for the first few seconds. A fantastic way to eat pineapple, considering I’m allergic to the real thing! The little red flowers that bloom in spring are meant to be good tossed in salads.

[26/08 Update : The pineapple sage has started flowering! Woohoo!]

Sambal has got to be North Ryde’s best kept secret. A Malaysian restaurant located right next to, (and almost hidden by the fluorescence of) the Golden Arches, it’s stylishly fitted out and is serving up what could possibly be the best Malaysian food in Sydney. Pardon the superlatives, but I haven’t had such a good feed-up in awhile. In fact, the last good Malaysian-style meal I had in this area was a couple of years ago, when my mom took me to a lunch venue illegally operated out of someone’s house. I think it has since been shut down by local authorities, but that’s another story for another time.

Tonight we were here for a quiet family meal. The first dish to arrive was the Belachan Eggplant, followed in quick succession by a Nonya Fish Curry, Joo Hu Char, and Inchee Kabin. The portions were generous and incredibly good value. Overall, while the food may have been well spiced and a little bit rich, it also tasted very clean and fresh on the palate.

The Belachan Eggplant was crisp on the outside, flecked with chilli shrimp paste and soft and creamy on the inside, like well cooked eggplant should be. B gave it a 3.5 on the eggplant rating scale. I think we also polished it off in 3.5 seconds! The Inchee Kabin, deep fried spiced chicken served with a special dipping sauce, could kick Col. Sanders’ Popcorn Chicken to the kerb any day. I wonder why KFC even needs to be in Malaysia! The dipping sauce is flavoured with worcestershire sauce – a colonial British influence – which incidentally is also known as ang mo tau eu, literally meaning “white person’s soy sauce”. The fish curry was so good I wanted to lift the bowl to my lips to slurp it up… but managed to restrain myself as there were three other people at the table wanting to drain the liquidy goodness from the bowl too.

There was no room for dessert, but that only gives us an excuse to return again. Next time, we will have to try the Ice Kacang (a shaved ice, fruit and syrup dessert), as I noticed the authentic Ice Kacang machine right behind the counter.

And if you go, maybe you can order the intriguing-sounding Vegemite Crab and tell me what it’s like!

Sambal Restaurant
Shop 7, 285-297 Lane Cove Road
North Ryde 2113.