Posted by KB on December 1, 2010
From the street, Monkey Magic doesn’t exactly jump out at you. Given the name we were expecting something a little more playful perhaps, but that’s probably a good thing; we’ve not yet been to a themed restaurant that serves decent food.
The street-level area is just a small collection of couches, but an enormous tree trunk reaching floor to ceiling gives it a bit of wow. Upstairs, long wooden tables and a great stretch of bar fill the surprisingly large dining area.
Though there are some tempting looking mains on the menu (like the slow-cooked pork belly), there's a couple of pages worthof smaller dishes, so we can't pass up the opportunity to pull together a meal with anything and everything we like the look of.
Edamame and renkon chips are the obvious choice from the appetisers. The lotus roots slices with their snowflake pattern have always seemed a bit special, and now deep fried and covered in pink salt, they’re even more so. Already we’ve planned a return visit just to sit in the streetside bar section with the chips and a couple of beers.
The restaurant manager, Hidetoshi Tsuboi, has rathe kindly offered to make smaller servings so that we can try a wider range of dishes (so don’t judge us too harshly for the amount of food here). He also recommends we get the caramelised pork lettuce cups, which were returned to the menu recently after clamorous insistence from customers. It’s easy to see why – the mix of soy caramelised pork, shitake mushrooms and ginger is salty, chewy and deliciously porky.
To round out our little degustation we decide on the duck pancakes, kingfish and soft-shell crab roll. Duck pancakes, served here with the buckwheat kind and a dark miso sauce, are normally a menu fave for us, but alongside the other dishes we’ve ordered, they do pale a little in comparison. Possibly the pancakes themselves lack a little flavour. All is forgiven, however, when we taste the beetroot-cured kingfish (pictured). Delicate slices are served carpaccio-style, their edges tinged red and tangy. The soft-shell crab roll, from the sushi part of the menu, also holds up its end of the deal, arriving with a claw thrust out beckoning us to the well-balanced combination of sweet crab, creamy mayo and salty roe.
We’ve been told by those in the know that desserts are a must, and we’re not once to argue when sweets are involved. Going for the most exotic sounding options, we end up with a salted caramel semifreddo with little wings made of pineapple chips; and the black sesame crème caramel, a dish offering so many tastes - coconut icecream, poached pears and pink peppercorn - that somehow work together in a pan-Asian flavour fusion.
A glass of plum wine to finish might be overdoing it, but we have no regrets. It’s been magic.
Monkey Magic is at 3-4/410 Crown Street, Surry Hills. Ph: 9358 4444
money magic, surry hills, japanese