Sushi Kotobuki

Since I've started driving, I've been going to lots of places that weren't easily accessible by public transport. I noticed this while driving to my Boyfriend's and we thought we'd check it out the next time we went out to dinner. So here we are, three visits later!

It took me three attempts to get this photo

It's a very unassuming shop, simple wooden counter with two registers, one for takeaway and one for in house orders. The wooden counter has purchasable sauces on top, and you can watch the final plating of a lot of the sushi as you order. Although there is a kitchen behind the green curtain.

So casual

Around the restaurant, there are lots of pictures of all the dishes as well as their prices.

All the little photos!

Here is their menu!

I got the Kotobuki special noodle, stir fried udon with special sauce, chicken, carrot, cabbage and dried bonito flakes. Bonito flakes weird me out whenever I see them used as a garnish for hot food as the flakes continue to wriggle and move around with the steam rising up. The udon noodles were wonderful, chewy and light with a slight char. There was a lot of veggies but not so much noodles. There is a lot of liquid in the noodle dish but otherwise there wasn't anything fancy to this dish.

Special noodles!

We picked the Kotobuki roll, tempura fried sushi with crunchy chicken, avocado and cream cheese. This was so interesting in texture, an absolute abomination by traditional tastes but very interesting. There was an amazing crunch from the light and crispy tempura batter, soft sushi rice, then the melted cream cheese and avocado and finally a massive crunch from the crumbed chicken. I really enjoyed it and it came with a little blob of wasabi and some sweet sauce drizzled over the top of everything.

So deliciously crunchy

My Boyfriend ordered the chicken karaage don. It did come absolutely drowned in kewpie mayo, its lucky that stuff is so delicious. I wonder what cut they used as the bits of chicken came in identical balls of firm white chicken flesh. Anyway, crunchy deep fried goodness with a faintly gingery/soy flavoured flesh. It wasn't bad and for a regular size, it had a lot of food.

Ha, you should see the large ones!

We actually went here later that week for our Valentine's Day dinner. As introverted gamer nerds, we didn't really have anything planned besides a tentative idea to have dinner out somewhere. We were too busy playing games to head out to Eat Street Markets so we just went down the road to Kotobuki Sushi again.

I got the karaage curry udon. This was a bit of a disaster in my eyes, the curry sauce was very mild and super thin in texture. I was expecting this super thick, clingy sauce that slurped everywhere rather then a thin sauce that drooped off my noodles. Or like stir fried noodles in a curry sauce, rather than a curry soup sorta deal. The udon noodles were just as good as I remembered from last time. My chicken karaage pieces were drenched in sauce and lost all their crunch. I would definitely not get this again.

Sad sauce

I got an unagi and tamago hand roll, grilled soy glazed eel and a soft egg omelet. Delicious morsel with great flavours, a slight sweet sticky sauce over soft eel and of course sweet egg omelet too. It was a perfect size for a snack.

Tasty thing :D

We got the caterpillar roll which consisted of tuna salad, cucumber, avocado and fish roe on top. It was tasty but nothing particularly special. That vague feeling of, yeah it was good and I would get it again but it wasn't anything that I recall. My Boyfriend echoed this feeling and said when I was writing this that he would get it again but he can't remember why.

Oh flying fish roe, you so tasty

My Boyfried got the teriyaki chicken udon. It's another very sad looking dish but it was very good! The teriyaki chicken was very strongly flavoured with the sauce, so it had soaked through while cooking. There was a lot of cabbage and very little carrot. The udon noodles were very saucy and as always, delicious!

Yes, we love noodles

We went here a third time after meeting JGirl's new rescue puppy Coffee, I went over to teach them some basic training with a clicker cause he was a bit naughty. After playing with the puppy for a few hours we felt really hungry and decided to go here. JGirl's girlfriend, Dr S., also came along with us for the first time ever!

We ordered to share and the first thing that arrived was the crunchy chicken roll, crunchy chicken katsu, cabbage and that crunchy cereal coating that falls everywhere. It was quite tasty.

Crispy goodness

JGirl insisted on salmon aburi and said that she was disappointed with the small amount of salmon that she received. She added that it was okay but quite stingy in portion sizing.

Big plate makes the portion look even smaller ):

Dr S., felt a hankering for a larger meal and decided to get beef yakiniku don, marinated beef and veggies on rice. I didn't try it but she said it was sweeter than she was used to and that it felt quite Westernised in flavour.

It looks so pretty and bright

I was ordering for my Boyfriend and I stuffed it up by instead of ordering ebi katsudon said something that must've come out as oyakodon. I had actually argued him out of getting this as he had ordered this once and hated it. This time it was quite delicious! There was a crunchy chicken katsu chunk that was covered in seasoned egg and a really savoury onion based sauce that soaked into the rice.

Oyakodon!

This was the spider roll, soft shell crab, cucumber, avocado, a mildly spicy mayonnaise and fish roe. I always love spider rolls, that delicious crunch, the soft flesh and the additional cool crunch of the cucumber were all delicious. I ate a lot of this.

Yummy, yummy

Lastly we ordered the uhh raw salmon, cream cheese and avocado roll. JGirl was disappointed that it was stingy again on the salmon, she and my Boyfriend ate it all with that being said.

Sushi Kotobuki
Atmosphere:6, very busy and basic little shop. They could honestly take over a lot of the nearby table space cause they have so many customers.
Service:7, very polite but on the other hand the table system is very strange as many times people behind us got offered tables before we did when we were in front of them in the queue.
Food: 8, quite good sushi and interesting fusion combinations with very good prices. Dr S., and JGirl said it was good for Australian sushi but average by Japanese standards.