Meshiya

After having spent two days indoors sick with a cold I jumped in the car with no idea where I was going but knowing that I needed to get out of the house. I headed to Footscray in search of something for dinner but nothing caught my eye so I kept driving and ended up in the CBD. I remembered a small Japanese restaurant at QV that always has something on the menu that will satisfy. After driving around the block a couple of times to get a car park I arrived at Meshiya and was greeted with a waitress signing out 'irashaimase' and I was shown to a table with a great view of the street to satisfy my people-watching habit :-)

I ordered some Japanese tea, mineral water & edamame to start while I browsed the menu. Unfortunately, they didn't have any mineral water and the Japanese tea was from a teabag. I switched my order to Coke Zero and settled on the sashimi & tempura set for my meal which came with salmon, tuna & white fish sashimi, prawn & vegetable tempura, miso soup, salad, pickled vegetables, rice & chawanmushi (egg custard).

The sashimi was absolutely delicious, very fresh and just what I was hoping for. The tempura batter was crisp & crunchy but definitely not the best I've tried. The very large broccoli floret tempura was a bit unwieldy and would have benefited from being halved first. I was looking forward to trying the chawanmushi but found that it wasn't really to my taste and by that time I was full and the waitress was taking away my tray so I let her take it as well after a few mouthfuls.

As a whole, the meal was very satisfying and the cost a reasonable $29.50. Meshiya 200 Lonsdale Street Melbourne VIC 3000 03 0654 6242 Fully Licenced & BYO Wine Only