Gigi Sushi Bar

237 Swanston St, Melbourne 3000
Date visited: 9th February 2013

We wanted to have a fast and easy lunch at Yoyogi today but arrived to find that the kitchen was closed for reno.  <Sob>  Us and Yoyogi go way back, over thirteen years to be exact - it was one of the first shops we tried in the CBD when we first moved to Melbourne.  Anyway, I digress - we passed Gigi which was only several shops down, so we made a quick decision to just drop in.

The interior was comfortable with ample space.  A waitress pointed us to our table and brought us our menu.  I didn't know whether to be impressed or daunted by the choices offered on the menu.  That usually means either of two things - something to please everyone or, as MerlinFan put it, the restaurant focuses more on variety rather than perfecting one specialty itself, resulting in mediocracy.

MerlinFan had the Milk Tea.  She said it was bloody damn sweet and would have been nice with pearls to counter the sweetness.

Milk tea

 AJ had the Iced Chocolate with Ice Cream which she enjoyed.

Iced Chocolate with ice cream

I had the 3 Coloured Drink.  It looked from the photo in the menu like cendol, red bean and corn, but when I saw it, I wondered where the corn was.  I took a little sip and realised OMG the whole bottom was filled with sugar syrup.  @_@  

3 Coloured Drink

After mixing it, it looked kinda disgusting.  Like murky soap water with floating bits of lard which I suspected was lumpy coconut cream which was way too thick and didn't mix with the melted ice, rather than coconut milk.  To be honest I wasn't even sure if the yellow bits were corn - they didn't particularly taste like anything.  Despite all the shaved ice, it was like drinking a glass of sugar water with floating bits of coconut cream, which wasn't particularly pleasant.  BTW it was also extremely hard to drink this with that tiny straw as bits of cendol and beans kept clogging it up; yes there's a spoon but it wasn't fun 'eating' a drink with a spoon if you get what I mean.

@_@

AJ had the Tendon, which was prawn, fish, squid and vegetables on rice with miso soup.  She said the tempura was really crispy and was happy with her dish.

Tendon

I had the Chicken Don which was teriyaki chicken on rice with miso soup.  

The chicken was tender and the teriyaki sauce was quite nice, although I still think it doesn't top my favourites at Yoyogi and Don Don.  What I didn't like was that there was a whole mountain of cabbage, bean sprouts (I HATE bean sprouts!!!), carrots and other vegetables that I don't usually associate with Teriyaki chicken on top of the rice.  Not only was it annoying having to pick through all the unnecessary veges to get to the rice, but it felt as though there was too much going on.

All of our dishes came with miso soup which we all liked.

I was glad I didn't order the Oyako Don that I had initially wanted, but MerlinFan did.  It was in one word, shocking.

MerlinFan felt so strongly about it that she wrote everything out for me to cut and paste in my post.  She said "the chicken tasted like chicken with NO seasoning - literally like just cooked chicken thrown in with half cooked egg (which too was tasteless and bland and had no seasoning whatsoever).  It was also thrown in with random vege like carrots, onions and cabbage or lettuce and baby corn.  Unlike the Oyako at Yoyogi in which the sauce and egg seeped deliciously into the rice and you could taste sauce/seasoning/onions in the eggs and chicken, this dish was literally like chicken and egg without seasoning just tossed together in a wok and dumped unceremoniously on plain rice. The rice was just dry and tasteless as was everything else. I am sad to say that I think someone like me who can't even cook can make scrambled eggs that taste better than that! So not worth the hefty $9 price we paid for it!!"

Oh well.  There are lots of places in the CBD with good Asian food so my motto is if you don't like it, move on.  End of story.

<a href="http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/71/1480141/restaurant/CBD/Gigi-Sushi-Bar-Melbourne"><img alt="Gigi Sushi Bar on Urbanspoon" src="http://www.urbanspoon.com/b/link/1480141/biglink.gif" style="border:none;padding:0px;width:200px;height:146px" /></a>