Dining in the Basement

Instead of a red lantern, a painted red wall signals the entrance to one of Melbourne’s hot new restaurants, Izakaya Den. For those that don’t know, izakaya is the Japanese term for a drinking house that also serves food, and they are popular after work gathering places in Japan. This Melbourne incarnation however is much more than a place to drink, it has just won best new restaurant in the celebrated The Age Good Food Guide 2011.

A brightly lit stairway takes you down, past refrigerated bottles of sake to a basement ten meters below street level. The restaurant, with its blackened wood bar and tables, and Japanese esthetic is more Blade Runner than basement and you’ll soon forget you are in a windowless concrete bunker deep below the central business district of Melbourne. Host and owner Simon Denton’s friendly welcome and the expert service guarantees a convivial experience, although you must like sitting on high stools.

I was there for a lunch pairing Isakaya Den’s food with local wines from three finalists in Victoria’s Young Gun of Wine Award. They were Andrew Marks from Wanderer winery, and Franco D’Anna from Hoddles Creek’s winery both situated in Victoria’s Yarra valley. The third winemaker, Michael Aylward, hails from the Ocean Eight winery located on the Mornington Peninsula. Nine dishes were selected from the mostly Japanese inspired menu, and matched to nine wines, three from each young gun. And yes there was a bucket for spitting out the wine on each table, but we wisely took the tram.

Instead of using paper the menu was projected onto the wall along with the wine selections and each dish arrived tapas-style for all of us to share.

We began with the soft and creamy fresh tofu made in house and served with plum and ponzu sauce. It is soft, creamy and like no other tofu I’ve eaten, it alone is worth the descent into the basement. Next came kingfish sashimi, thinly sliced fish and garnished with a drizzle of sesame oil and a scattering of seeds. Skewers of fatty pork belly and leek rounded out this trio that was matched with a glass of pinot blanc, pinot gris and chenin blanc.

The next three dishes were paired with two chardonnays and a pinot noir. My biggest surprise was the sweet corn kernels dipped in a tempura batter, deep-fried and served with green tea salt, I loved them and I am not a fan of corn. Also in this grouping was baked blue eye, an oily fish, topped with a fabulous ginger miso. The last dish in the trio was cold, sliced duck breast fanned on untoasted buckwheat, with a pomegranate dressing. Untoasted buckwheat was a first for me, the combination of flavors and textures that seemed far from Japan, worked well and was a perfect match with the pinot noir.

In the final trio of dishes I was thrilled to see grilled ox tongue, it is such an underrated meat and when grilled it is soft and creamy. It was garnished with finely diced spring onion, (aka green onions in North America). The sansho pepper grilled quail had us all gnawing on the bones and the vegetable mix eggplant and yam flavored with vinegar balanced out this group, which was partnered with a syrah and two pinot noirs.

Did we skip dessert? Of course not. Although no dessert was included in the young wine makers lunch we chose an apple dish from the regular menu. A tower of thin slices of dried apple, layered with apple sorbet arrived at the table drizzled with a syrup of honey and apple juice and decorated with fresh strawberries, the perfect, refreshing not too sweet bite after all that food and wine.

Following the meal there was an animated discussion amongst the wine makers and guests as to which wine matched with which dish. There were a few standouts and some surprising combinations revealing the wide range of people’s tastes. And while the restaurant is better known for serving sake, the lunch revealed that wine and Japanese food pair well. This combination wine tasting lunch was a one off event but never the less you must make sure Izakaya Den is on your list of Melbourne restaurants to try.