Herald Rating: * * * * 1/2
Address: 5 Pah Rd, Epsom
Ph: (09) 630 5413
Open: Lunch Tuesday-Friday; dinner Tuesday-Saturday
Ambience: Handsomely plain.
Vegetarians: Will need to like tofu.
Watch out for: The boiled sashimi
Bottom line: A twist on the familiar.
Recent reviews notwithstanding, I tend to avoid eating Japanese in a professional capacity. It's not that I don't like the food: au contraire, as a Francophile Japanese might say, I love it, not least because its presentation usually satisfies the aesthetic sense as much as its substance satisfies the appetite.
My problem is rather that it is much easier to eat than write about.
Producing 600-odd words about the difference between the best California roll you ever had and the worst one is not as easy as you might imagine. And, really, when you get down to it, miso soup is miso soup, right?
Well, wrong, I discover. You can't get a bowl of regular old miso soup on the side at Bowz because they've got a better idea. It's called Teppan Seafood Miso Soup and costs 10 bucks but it contains a fat, juicy grilled tiger prawn, a fillet of white fish the size of a builder's thumb, and a Hokkaido scallop (one of those thick, round Northern Hemisphere beauties) floating in the broth. For a man of more moderate appetite than mine, this would be a meal.
You see what I mean. Like Sake Bar 601 in Morningside, which I wrote about a few weeks ago, Bowz attracts attention - and answers a writer's prayers - by giving a new inflection to something familiar.
My previous experience of teppanyaki (notably at Kabuki in the Stamford Plaza) was of a barbecue with pretensions, but this is different: owner Ken Totsukawa and an offsider preside over the teppanyaki grills beneath a sparkling stainless-steel rangehood the size of a spaceship (you can sit at stools along the counter to watch the action, or book a table if you want a quieter evening); meanwhile out the back another chef concocts starters and desserts of striking originality.
So the only sashimi on the menu is tuna, boiled very rare, dressed with a mild wasabi and soy mayonnaise, set in a delicate salad of baby greens; there's a fragrant soupy-stew of beef tendon (!) which comes with a roti - a staple of Indian cooking - so you can create your own meaty-drippy sandwich on the spot; the same roti flour is used for the base of a tiny delicate "pizza"; hard-boiled egg whites have creamy scallops where the yolk should be.
The name Bowz, I learn, derives from the super-short "bozu" haircut of owner Ken Totsukawa (picture a restaurant called "crewcut", "mohawk" or "mullet") and it's all of a piece with the place's confident chic.
The service is exceptional: our waitress, who I suspect is one of the world's few Japanese-speaking Tongans, was charming, and a chap who is presumably the head waiter expounded at length on the difference between double-malt sake and the regular stuff. I'm not sure I understood every word, but by the end of the evening we were the best of friends: I reckon he'd make an excellent sake-drinking companion.
Having sampled widely from the top half of the menu, I passed on a main dish (though I tried my tablemates' rack of lamb and seafood medley, which seemed only fair since they'd been poking chopsticks in my direction all night). They were small for main dishes but superb and the desserts - including a creme brulee of green tea - were little works of art. For sheer originality Bowz is up there with 601 and Gion in Parnell. But it's small: be sure to book.
