Zen Japanese Restaurant, Hawthorn

It has been a while since we last had Japanese food so Gaz decided he'll bring me to a restaurant on Burwood Road, Hawthorn that has received good reviews.

We had takoyaki balls as entree. They were piping hot and very delicious with the bonito flakes and mayo on top. Gaz also liked them very much. My only gripe is that there is not many octopus bits in the batter.

Gaz wanted to have some sashimi and ordered a main sized sashimi platter. 16 pieces of fish comprising of salmon, tuna and whitefish. Doesn't the whitefish look like chicken? The salmon was really delicious, full of flavour however I cannot say the same with the rest of the fish. Oddly the tuna did not have the familiar melt in your mouth texture but was rather grainy and bland.

This is my bento set comprising of sashimi and sushi, tempura, teriyaki chicken, inari and salad with sesame sauce. I believe the staff are Korean as I overhead snippets of conversation in Korean. The sesame sauce on the salad is a Korean touch to the bento box.

Gaz had another bento box with beef, teriyaki salmon, teriyaki chicken and salad. The teriyaki salmon was delicious. The chef must have received a good shipment of salmon.

The bento came with miso soup and dessert. We got green tea ice cream and sesame ice cream each. Gaz preferred black sesame ice cream to his white sesame ice cream but we took a picture of the ice cream anyway because the pattern on the bowl is so pretty!


The food at Zen is good overall, and reasonably priced for the portions we received. I did feel that the sushi rice were inconsistently prepared - some bits were larger, some were smaller and lacked the precision that I have come to associate with Japanese cuisine.