Nonbei Sake Bar and BBQ

There's a new nurse at work who I instantly became best foodies friends with when he started working with us. His name is W., we're both Vietnamese, love food and can eat lots. It was a match made in heaven, so before I knew it, he had convinced me to go to his favourite all you can eat restaurant, Nonbei! He was very excited when I said I hadn't been as he goes here quite regularly and was waxing rhapsodical about the tender fattiness of their sashimi and the sheer quantities of wagyu beef he had consumed on previous occasions here.

We invited several other people but for the first trip, it ended up being W., L., and myself. We went a second time less than a week later due to H., getting jealous of us going, this time Ms Chatterbox also accompanied her, as well as W., L., and myself again haha.

This place!

It's a very easy spot to find as its along Ann Street, right around the corner from where China Town basically ends. Plus the faux Japanese exterior is a dead give away haha.

Very easy to spot

Here is their menu! Their menu attraction for us was their buffet, starting from $39.90, there are two higher grades which included more expensive quality ingredients for the buffet. The $49.90 buffet that we all had to decide on had a wagyu of the day, pork neck, salmon sashimi, salmon yukke, fried oyster, tempura ginger, tempura oyster, dried ray wing and takuna rice. As well as the buffets, there are ala carte items, individually priced barbeque items and hot pot assortments!

The catch with the buffet is of course that the entire table has to order from the same buffet and that any leftover food is fined. They were pretty lenient when we went, although we were sneakily destroyed food any way that we possibly could to avoid getting fined. 

Unlike other buffets I've been to, this place had a tick and flick menu that you indicated either the physical quantity or weight of the item you were ordering. So for example, for fried items you specified how many pieces you wanted, for barbeque items it was by 100g lots and random items were usually in serving size. For serving size, most of the time they keep piling up your dish until you tell them to stop. W., L., and myself are all very adventurous eaters so we tried a lot of interesting things that night!

All the sheets! They gave us spares too

Ours were clearly marked "Awesome buffet"

We ordered a lot of food

Like so much.

These are from the second time we went, Miss Chatterbox, H., and L., all ordered alcoholic cocktails, I can't remember what mixed with Calpis. W., ordered some unimpressive looking plum wine again.

Both times, without fail we recieved these dishes first. L., W., and I all decided to try this and we were really glad because they were delicious if a little daunting! It wasn't so much the fluorescent and delicious seasoned seaweed salad that was throwing us but the wasabi octopus and the chilli squid!. The wasabi octopus is on the left, it had a very nasal clearing wasabi bite in the thin fluid, the texture of the octopus itself was fantastic! It popped in your mouth like what you'd imagine popping bubble wrap with your teeth would be like, with a slightly firmer texture. The chilli squid was a slippery and mildly spicy morsel, much like the spice you would get with kimchi.

When we were here the second time, we got double serves for every and H., loved the wasabi octopus so much she had three plates by herself and said that she would love to have this with rice as a dinner. She also said she wanted to make this for herself. We had to really convince Miss Chatterbox to try any of this, she's a Filipino lady but quite Westernised in her tastes, so she refused to eat any raw foods especially fish. She also insisted that all her food had to be cooked to well done. Even the salmon sashimi, I didn't take photos.

L-R clockwise, chilli squid, seasoned seaweed and wasabi octopus

This is the salmon yukke, a jumble of chopped up fresh salmon pieces with a raw egg yolk with grated wasabi on the side. H., and W., both got this on different occasions. H., has only recently started eating seafood as she as convinced her entire life that she had a seafood allergy after eating some pickled seafood when she was younger. She ate a prawn by accident or something she told me, and since then has started cautiously eating seafood. She said that this was quite good. Apparently they have a similar dish in Korean cuisine, but usually using fresh beef like beef tartare?

Exactly the same as the picture

Both times we were here, we got big scoops of the Japanese potato salad, a soft mash of potato, mayonnaise, carrot and spring onion doused in barbeque sauce. It was a good little starter and we helped ourselves to it constantly while we waited for everything else to appear.

Japanese style potato salad is always good

L., H., and Miss Chatterbox all ordered huge amounts of agedashi tofu. This first picture was from the first visit, we didn't realise that they only came in one very, very small serve! The piece of tofu pictured is only about the size of a 50c piece floating in a 10cm dish of broth.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it

We had a real hankering for fried oysters and these were gorgeous! Super golden brown, crunchy, and they burnt your mouth with a squirt of juicy oyster! The coating was a little plain but it came with a large blob of tartare sauce that could've been a little tangier to balance things out.

So tasty

Here is all our fried food piled on one plate! We got nearly everything the first time, pan fried gyoza, spicy pan fried gyoza, fried ginger, tempura octopus, chicken karaage, teriyaki chicken karaage and sweet chilli chicken karaage. The gyoza are all delicious, a very crunchy bottom with a juicy and flavoursome ginger and pork flavour to their ample filling. The spicier ones are coloured slightly orange, Miss Chatterbox complained that they were too spicy however and ended up discarding hers.

The karaages were all quite similar, the teriyaki one is my pick as the chicken flesh has a faint soy and ginger flavour from the teriyaki used. Oh and the sweet chilli chicken karaage is just the plain karaage covered in sweet chilli sauce, I'm really not sure what I was expecting to be honest.

The tempura octopus was a touch rubbery so I didn't try a second one. I dislike pickled ginger at the best of times, so I didn't try the fried ginger.

So many, I can't be bothered naming them all

Oh myyyy, we got so much salmon sashimi both times. I normally don't like salmon sashimi, but I finally get it, that slightly firm, slightly jelly like flesh with its ribbons of translucent fat ripping through. It melted on the tongue and spread its unctuous flavours throughout my taste buds. Goddamn this sashimi was good, I had two pieces the first time and nearly six or seven the second time hahaha.

Some damn good sashimi

Our mish mash of meats from the first occasion! Chicken soft bone, chicken thighs, pork belly, wagyu of the day which was marinatd in garlic and soy and some beef fillet. Ignore everything else but the wagyu to be honest. Chicken soft bone is actually the soft cartilage part of the breastbone, grill it to a crisp and chomp away. We really didn't eat the chicken or the pork belly much because of the longer cooking time and the fact that we had gorged ourselves on wagyu long before anything else had even cooked. Such tender delicious wagyu, has anyone ever had a bad wagyu even?

The second time we were here, we received cubes of wagyu instead of these thin marinated slices. Still delicious.

So much meat

We got pickled bean sprouts! I can't remember much about them so I doubt they were memorable.

What?

Beef stew! A tiny, tiny serve but really delicious, it had such a good flavour and the beef was so meltingly tender, it just fell apart when I picked it up and the thick stew was utterly drinkable. If I didn't have to share it, I'd have hogged it all to myself. I did a lot of sniper style plucking when people were distracted.

So blurry, so delicious

I don't know why I ordered takuna rice, I remember it being a lot more delicious at other places I've been to.  For this version, I got steamed white rice with the takuna aka pickled mustard greens chopped up on top. I did not get anywhere near finishing this with how much other food I was eating.

Poor wasted food

Seaweed sheets! Perfect to improve your skin and as a munchable, flavoursome and utterly zero space taking up snack while you're waiting for heartier things! I pretty much ate an entire bowl of these to myself both times. My god, I love seaweed sheets. My sister, VGirl, has been known to eat almost an entire set of the packets in one seating, like 8-10 packets.

I love seaweed

This is the absolutely massive cabbage salad. It's the size of a dinner plate and piled to the top, I tried a little bit and I remember thinking it was creamy and salty like kewpie Japanese mayonaise. I don't recall anything else about it but W., can polish off an entire bowl by himself as H., and Miss Chatterbox highly praised its crunchiness as well.

Interesting.

We decided to get dried skate wings as well! Guessing these come from manta ray like creatures. We tried it as it came, chewy as old boot leather. Then we put it on the barbeque until it was golden brown, still a bit chewy but not unpleasant. We were intrigued by the change that came over the pieces as the heat reached them, they flipped, buckled and blistered in slow seconds which was great fun. Still nothing to write home about.

I then forgot about a piece as I was eating things and decided to eat the charry morsel as to not waste food, I was amazed. The flavour had become intensely smoky sweet like the sauce you get on eel in Japanese restaurants with a slight chewiness that reminded a lot of us of dried squid pieces. We began eating them with great speed, watch them carefully as they burn fast!

Stage 1, unchanged

Stage 2, starting to pop and flip over

Stage 3/4, make sure both sides look this golden before consuming!

Nonbei Sake Bar & BBQ
Atmosphere: 6, dimly lit barbeque joint with lots of open tables as well as hidden nooks to sit in. Hopefully you get assigned to a nook as they are much better decorated and give the semblance of privacy. 
Service: 8, very attentive and quick to clear dishes. They are very informative and are able to help explain the menu very well, as well as helping make decisions on food if they think you've gone overboard on ordering.
Food: 8, very good food. I'd gladly go here again with friends. The food is great quality with an interesting variety and $50 all you can eat sashimi and wagyu is a great deal in my eyes.



Also until Food Truck PheNomNomNom is on, I'm gonna spam this all over my posts.

What! What is Food Truck PheNomNomNom, you ask! It's a food truck gathering! It's at the Coorparoo Bowls Club from noon to 6pm and is starring Juan More Taco, the Pasta Cruiser, Sushi Neko Food Van, Roam'in Pizza, Chocolate Komberry Co, V's Vanilla Van, iFroyo, Thumbs Up Hotdogs and King of the Wings! I've been inviting people like crazy over Instagram to come here. Click on their names to links to their FB pages!

It's a few days after my birthday so expect to see myself and VGirl lurking around there for some cheap eats! See you there, and here are some more promo pics! Follow them on Instagram at @FoodTruckPhenomnomnom or #FoodTruckPhenomnomnom . They keep releasing more and more promo stuff!