Raffles reviews: Sokyo at The Star, Sydney

Sokyo at The Star is AMAZING. I always like Japanese food but this place blew my mind and my tastebuds so this review is going to be longer than usual because I need to tell you EVERYTHING about it.

When mama told that me Yumtable had invited us to try their restaurant booking website I told her I’d be picking where we’d be eating. But it was so, so hard because they have 2000 restaurants on their site and I wanted to eat at them all.

The Yumtable website is easy to use and much more fun than doing my Mathletics homework… which is all mama usually lets me do on her computer.

Mama says the site makes life easy for people like us who often decide to dine out at the last minute (because it allows you to book right up to one hour before a meal and offers discounts of up to $40 – which are automatically taken off the bill without fussy paperwork – a huge bonus).

We booked Sokyo at The Star, which is where that place people go to lose money is. But they also go there to stay at nice hotels and eat because there are loads and loads of amazing restaurants. Sokyo looks quite posh and also quite Japanese which makes sense because it is. One of the walls is covered in things that look like big fish scales and there’s a room with dangly bits that looks like hundreds of snakes, which is cool.

The staff are nice, especially to kids, which is good because sometimes at restaurants they kind of look at me and my sister like we’re they wish we’d go away. But at Sokyo they kept stopping to chat with me and ask me if I liked the food.

The food is epicer than epic. My friend Lorraine told me that it was the best and she was so right. I think she’s like a food wizard because she knew I’d love it. And I totally did.

My sister got the chicken and some salmon nigiri and licked the plate clean but mama, dad and I decided that we’d get the lunch set menu. This worked out so awesome because there were three different choices for each course and three of us which meant we could order one of EVERYTHING on the menu and share.

We started with sashimi. We had short rib, salmon and tuna. All of which were incredible. I love sashimi but I’ve never had any this good before.

The Short Rib Tosazu (with pickled grapes, chestnut puree, tarragon, tosazu) was like nothing I’ve ever had before and melted in my mouth with pops of flavour. The salmon (with red shiso, ginger and ssamjang dressing) was incredible but the Tuna Umami (with choya umeshu, garlic soy umami) was my favourite. It came with crispy garlic thingies and little baby jellies and caused a party in my mouth.

Next came tempura. We got to try asparagus, cuttlefish and red snapper.

They were all so, so good but the snapper was my favourite. Mum went nutty for the asparagus because it had truffle and edamame sauce and she loves that stuff. (It’s true)

The salad was big and green and covered in spicy dressing and sesame seeds and there was miso that had big fat chunks of really silky tofu and tasted much better than any I’ve ever had.

For mains we had these spicy lamb chops that were really nice (with black garlic eggplant purée, Aka miso and basil). And big fat sea scallops (Hokkaido scallops with wasabi shitake pepper sauce) which I’ve never tried before. The sauce they were in was so yum.

Then there was the salmon which was a bowl of edible heaven. The salmon was still a bit pink in the middle how I like it and it came with pickled cucumbers and hazelnuts. I could eat this 1,000 times and not get sick of it.

I begged mama for dessert because I din’t want the meal to be over. I chose one called Goma Street (caramelised white chocolate, sesame ice cream). It was a tower of scrummy chocolate and some fluffy caramel stuff and the ice cream looked like a big grey egg sitting on a nest. There was a cool black strip of something yummy which made the plate look a bit like the yin yang symbol from Kung Fu Panda.

Mama ordered tofu cheesecake (with thyme sugar, strawberry consommé and fresh strawberries) which wasn’t tofuey at all. It was delicious.

The only problem with Sokyo is that it is so,so good that I need to go back or move in and live there because I’m going to be thinking about all the yummy food for the rest of forever.

Reviewed by Raffles – aged 7 
(bracketed details by his mama)

Disclaimer: The Eats Worlds dined at Sokyo as guests of Yumtable but all opinions are our own.

Sokyo at The Star
Level G, The Darling The Star
80 Pyrmont Street, Pyrmont NSW 2009
https://yumtable.com.au/restaurant/Sokyo/1744

An award-winning travel writer and photographer, Aleney de Winter was fresh from school when she first set off to explore the far reaches of Australia with a two-man tent and a beaten-up Kingswood for company. Three decades, and two kids later, and she's still on the go, with her itchy-footed offspring in tow.