Yayoi Japanese Teishoku Restaurant | Westfield Sydney

We absolutely love everything about Japan, the culture, their way of life, the elegance and beauty of all surroundings but most importantly the food. Japanese food offers quite a large variety of dishes that can cater for anyone so when we get asked "What is your favourite Japanese restaurant in Sydney" it's a near impossible question to answer right because no one restaurant combines all the flavours and techniques that Japan is known for.

Yayoi comes to mind with their serving of Teishoku style set meals, boasting a healthy serving of rice, miso soup and other main and side dishes ranging from beef, pork, chicken, noodles and more. Each meal provides a healthy balance of nutrients and quality of the food is the priority for Yayoi. 

We love visiting Yayoi and given the long lines outside the door every night, its not a bad guess to say that we are not alone. Yayoi is the embodiment of Japanese fine dining, with 343 outlets in Japan and 194 international and continues to grow steadily and bring their 100 years experience to bring Japanese food culture to the world. With two stores already in Sydney, Yayoi has officially opened a new store in Sydney Westfields which makes it that much easier to get your fix.

Umeshu (Plum Wine)

Yayoi Sydney Westfield offers a full line of Japanese umeshu, otherwise known as plum wine and serves  it by the glass for only $8 each. You can easily select your preferred wine using the simple umeshu menu which shows the sweetness and aroma levels, and provides a description about the wine's origins.

Yuzu Umeshu and Tantakatan Umeshu

We were lucky enough to sample the Yuzu Umeshu (above), Tantakatan Umeshu (above), Aged 3 years umeshu and the Umeshu Classic. Each wine had a completely different tasting profile and of the wines we tasted, we had tasted both sweet wines and crispy "sake-like" wines. The Yuzu Umeshu offered a very refreshing blend of citrus flavours that produced a sweet and sour tasting palette and was our go-to drink for the remainder of the night.

Main Dishes from the evening

We sampled a variety of dishes from the a la carte menu which included the following:

Chicken Namban - The taste of this dish is consistent based on other Japanese places that we've visited. Our expectation was crispy chicken topped with a creamy namban sauce. We enjoyed every bite and even after photographing the dish, it was still piping hot!

Mix Toji - The perfectly cooked pork cutlet and deep fried prawn was everything we wanted from a deep fried dish. We thought it was interesting to include wagyu beef on this dish as well. There's definitely a lot happening! Everything on its own can be quite dry however the egg brought everything together.

Wagyu Sukiyaki (featured above) - We thought this was the main highlight from the mains. The flavour from the broth, wagyu beef and soaked udon noodles was hearty and best enjoyed at night! You can relax, unwind and either have this hotpot alone or with someone else. The serving size is definitely generous.

Unagi Hitsumabushi Teishoku

As the unagi hitsumabushi teishoku arrived at the table, we saw an empty bowl, rice, rice spoon, condiments and soup. Everyone was quite intrigued and unsure of how to eat this dish which is why it comes with instructions! Pretty much chuck all the condiments into the rice bowl and pour the warm browth on top! We would've preferred this dish on its own without the condiments as the ginger flavour changed the flavour of the broth.

Tamago Yaki

We've only had Japanese-style omelette at Sushi Trains so safe to say, we were excited to pick this little omelette roll up with our chopsticks. It was quite bouncy, light, subtle in flavour with the right amount of sweetness and saltiness

Kinoka Warabi Mochi 

This was Christie's favourite dessert of the night. It literally melts in your mouth and so light. She didn't feel guilty eating this jelly like dessert. It was coated with soybean powder which tasted like roasted peanuts and with the brown sugar syrup, it reminded me of a raindrop cake!

Matcha Anmisu

The green tea ice cream in this dessert was quite subtle. If you are not a green tea fan, you might enjoy this! It's not that strong. Also when complimented with the azuki beans, agar jelly, fruits and brown sugar syrup, it makes this dessert an enjoyable and subtle way of ending your meal.

Matcha Warabi Mochi

 The Warabi mochi is a jelly-like dessert made from bracken starch; Matt isn't the biggest fan of matcha so he found this quite bitter so the brown sugar syrup sauce will become your best friend :)

Snapshots of Food dined as guests of Yayoi thanks to FCBA