Yoyogi

211-213 Swanston St, Melbourne 3000Visited: 24th December 2011

This is one of my favourite Japanese food haunts in the CBD.  Discovered Yoyogi years ago in my first year of uni and have been coming back here since.  Whenever I am away for work or holidays I crave my favourite dishes here.

It was a scorching day (a 'fires of hell'-like 28 degrees or hotter) before Christmas Eve and I had finished a half day shift and MerlinFan too returned from the country early this morning from work, so we decided to head out for a late lunch before doing some last minute Christmas present and grocery shopping.

We had our usual milk tea with pearl sago.  The milk tea here is always consistently sweet, and today the pearls were soft, slightly chewy and cooked right into the middle.  

Sometimes it is hard in the centre, whether this is because the drink is too cold, or the pearls are not cooked long enough, who knows.  Today, I was happy to say it was perfect, which is fantastic when you haven't been back for a while and been having food cravings.

Milk tea with pearl sago

It was almost 4pm that Friday, and the place was still packed.  We thought we were going out for dinner later that evening, so we decided just to share rather than have our own dish each.  We decided to try their takoyaki and have our "usual," the oyako don.

Takoyaki

The octopus balls were good, burning hot and crispy on the outside and mushy on the inside.  It came covered with sweet takoyaki sauce and fish flakes, with a side of salad.  My mouth is watering just thinking of it!  I did enjoy the takoyaki a lot, but MerlinFan commented that she still liked the ones at Big Mama better.

Oyako Don

 My favourite - Yoyogi's oyako don.  This a Japanese rice bowl dish, where chicken, egg and sliced onions are cooked together in a simmering sauce and served on top of rice.  The seaweed on top of the egg is a great addition to the dish, it just adds that extra punch of flavour.  There were mounds of almost runny egg today mingled with the juicy bite-sized chicken, and as usual was perfectly seasoned - I am in oyako don heaven!  I LOVE the oyako don here!

Miso soup

 All the rice dishes here come with a bowl of miso soup, but if you don't get served the soup, remember to ask for it because sometimes they "forget" to bring it to you unless you ask.  I love the miso here too, it is perfectly seasoned and comes with seaweed and tiny squares of tofu.

Overall, I love the rice dishes here.  Other favourites would be the teriyaki chicken don, and the beef/chicken/pork curry with rice.  One thing that I appreciate about Yoyogi is that the food always tastes consistently the same.  The only peeve I have about this place is that they do not accept credit cards, so bringing cash is always a must. 

Addition:

Visited: 3rd January 2012

Since Yoyogi is only one of my favourite haunts, and since I did mention some other dishes in my original post, I have decided to add two more pics of our "usuals" here from today. ( Yes, BTW, we were just here over a week ago)

We were a bit late for lunch, so they ran out of pearl sago.  Damn!  (Food envy looks at the girls sitting across the aisle with ice pearl milk tea)  So we had our second "usual," ice lemon tea.  Insanely sweet today.

Ice Lemon Tea

We had the oyako don as usual and the beef curry don.  The portions are really generous and falling off the plate, usually drowned in curry sauce.  The beef is really tender and well marinated, and today the potatoes were melt in your mouth soft.  Yum!

Beef curry don

Here is a photo of the agedashi tofu just for the sake of it... love the soup it comes in, although I would have to say I still prefer the one from Big Mama.