I have mixed feelings about the redevelopment of Glen Waverley central. On one hand, there are now more restaurants and shops but on the other hand, it is starting to feel too crowded and congested. It is the new Box Hill.
Among one of the new places which popped up after the redevelopment was Marble Yakiniku, which also owns Ichi Katsu a fried Japanese pork schnitzel place on Kingsway. Both are placed in the upper middle range restaurant scale.
There are different types of banquet and ala carte menus available. For simplicity, we just ordered the Bamboo banquet $110 pp. We get a plate of sashimi, tofu salad, scallop with cod roe sauce, 2 kinds of A5 wagyu cuts and 1 of M9 wagyu cuts, rice, miso soup and dessert.
The sashimi, scallops and tofu salad were all served in quick succession all in the time it took me to sprint to the ATM and back. There is a 5% cash discount, and no merchant fees with cash payment. The tofu salad had some unusual red seaweed in it.
Sashimi always tastes nice.. unless it's a 'surprise sashimi'. Once in another Glen Waverley Japanese restaurant we ordered the 'special of the day' which was offcuts of salmon sashimi soaked in soy sauce. Here we have kingfish and salmon slices, no offcuts.
I love it that they use charcoal grill, not electric. But the problem was that we are both very bad on the grill and the fat on the meat kept catching fire. So I'm not sure whether I've squandered my chance of eating A5 wagyu the best way it can be cooked. My favourite cut was the A5 Japanese wagyu flatmeat which has a good balance of fat and meatiness. It is also thicker than the A5 shortrib so there was actually something to bite into and enjoy the buttery silkiness.
We do get pieces of mushrooms and pumpkin to grill as well, but they were a disaster. Even though the pumpkin was sliced thinly, it just would not get tender without getting horribly burnt. We were given only 1 hour to cook, eat and socialise so it felt quite stressful. There was no explanation or guidance on what the cuts were, how best to grill and savour. So having chosen this place for a special occasion it was a little disappointing for the lack of service.
During our meal we spoke about the evolution of food from necessity to symbol of decadence. Foods that used to be rejects, like trotters or tendon are now selling at more than the price of meat itself. Having recently braised a whole kilo of tendons and finishing it largely by myself I almost felt the bile rising up in my throat. Who knew too much tendon can be a bad thing?
Here's a bit of a trivia on wagyu in keeping with the topic of decadent food. Wagyu actually translates to Japanese cow. This is probably a good example of how a word can be used as both an insult (they just took my parking, what a cow!) and a compliment (you're as prized as a cow). There are actually 4 main breeds of wagyu, but each place / prefecture raises these breeds differently so it yields different textured meat. That's why we sometimes hear about cattle who only listens to Mozart, or only bathes in sake. The most expensive cuts are Matsusaka wagyu from Mie prefecture which are from virgin female cows and the most famous is Kobe wagyu from Kobe in Hyogo prefecture which are from castrated bulls. Now that's some trivia!
Back to our dinner where I'm sure I did not just ate some unsullied cow from the grill, for dessert we get a choice of vanilla, black sesame or green tea ice cream. It came with a wooden spoon straight from the ice cream cups of yonder days. Quite an anti climax compared to the nice wagyu cuts we had been enjoying. The quality of the beef is very good and having only a few slices per person made it feel less sinful to consume so much fat. A true connoisseur will never bemoan the calories they have eaten, it is in fact a necessity for flavour.. just walk an extra two blocks to the car on the way home.
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