Poet's Corner

Sasaki may be small, but it’s big on celebrating the traditions, culinary and otherwise, of chef Yu Sasaki’s Japanese home 

- Pat Nourse

Rare is the restaurant where you’ll find the toilet paper folded to a point like you’re in a hotel. But then there’s lots about Sasaki that’s not quite usual. There’s its size (or lack thereof), its air of hushed reverence, the fractal obscurity of its inner-inner-city address. And there’s an obsession with detail that’s striking. Not every detail gets the attention it deserves, but when it works it’s really something.

The texture of crab custard, for instance, has the poise of a haiku. Steamed in a tea bowl – the bowl is called a chawan, and this dish is known as a chawanmushi in Japan – it’s a silken thing, and the sensation of slipping a hand-finished spoon through its surface may well tingle your spine. The custard is made with a stock flavoured with what a waitress endearingly refers to as crab bones. There’s a scattering of swimmer-crab meat on top, and that’s it. Were the crab meat in pristine condition it’d be near perfect; as it is, its economy of gesture is captivating.

If you’re seated at the bar, which is low, elegantly lit and fashioned from pale, thick planks of Tasmanian oak, the dining room at Sasaki is exquisite, a jewel-box of a thing, the placement of each bowl and candle as considered as the fall of syllables in a stanza. Seated at the pair of tables by the rollerdoor that opens onto Nithsdale Lane, meanwhile, you might be well placed to consider the fall of the leaves from the ginkgo trees as the season changes. Or the aesthetic contrast between the trees and the razor-wire topping the parking lot behind the Australian Federal Police building. But mostly you’ll be thinking about how the 20 inches of noren curtain hanging from the door does nothing to keep out the night air.