totoya @ military road, neutral bay

It seems like I'm eating a whole lot of Jap food these days - though I have to admit, I do prefer eating Jap over the other cuisines that are out there. There's something about the lightness, flavours and variety in Jap foods which keep me going back. I pretty much eat everything although not the biggest fan of octopus sushi, egg sushi (too boring) and fish roe (the texture of it makes me cringe and the fact that I'm eating baby fish eggs...urgh!).

A couple of weeks back, a friend suggested eating Jap in Neutral Bay. For those unfamiliar to the area, Neutral Bay is your haven of Japanese restaurants. I've only been to a handful but have heard enough about the remaining to be enticed to make the trip out when I have my cravings for Jap (unfortunately J thinks otherwise and we usually settle for something closer to home).

My friend A took charge and ordered for the group (I think he was hitting onto the waitress!) From memory, this was beef/ox tongue.

Takoyaki.

Unagi with Rice. Awesome with a generous serve of wasabi tossed through - the wasabi really gives this dish its bite!

A helping me get my photo. Can't remember the name of this one but definitely chicken.

Sashimi & Sushi Boat. I wish it had more pieces to go around the table.The start of the skewers (you should have seen the length of our bill when they punched it through the till!! It was definitely a good half metre long!!). A pretty much ordered all the skewers on the menu with the exception of the ones containing innards.
More skewers.Even more skewers. Vegetarian skewers.My favourite skewer was probably the Chicken Skin Skewer (fatty...yes I know) but man, it was so tasty and didn't taste the least bit fatty. I'm usually quite grossed out just eating chicken skin but seriously, this is a must try! Anyway, after all the skewers, the guys decided they were still hungry and ordered a Hot Pot. Look at that pile of noodles!!

It ended up being quite a silly night - the guys challenged each other to squash the big empty cans of Asahi with one hand (I think J won that one hand's down much to my annoyance). The conversation occasionally veered to girls and at one point, the whole table stood up/moved a metre out so that my friend T wouldn't splash them with hot water when he was grabbing noodles from the pot. More noteworthy is that the waitress came to the table with our hot pot sitting on the stove and the stove turned on - skill or insanity; I'm not to sure. Dinner was about $35-40pp which I thought was quite reasonable. Worth a try!