Izakaya Den @ Melbourne CBD

8 months into our Melbourne adventure and we are still on the hunt for a convenient place where we can eat good Japanese cuisine without busting our wallets. While Izakaya Den does not exactly fall under that category, we couldn't resist detouring from our plan and giving this place a go when we learnt of their secretive entrance and underground venue.

Some have struggled with finding the entrance but the easiest way to find this place is find the number "114" sign along Russell Street and walk down half a flight of wide stairs. The glass door on the left will lead you into a narrow open kitchen restaurant / bar. If you walk straight down to the boutique, you have walked down a little too far.

The menu is not huge, couple of entrees, couple of sashimi, couple of char grill and non char grill dishes and couple of desserts. Matter of fact, their drinks menu has way more options compared to what you can eat.

If you think that Asahi is the only Japanese beer, you haven't seen what is out there in terms of Japanese beers. One of the nicer ones I have had is Yebisu but I was kind of upset when my friend told me that the beer sells for a hundred yen (approx AUD1.50) because I paid 10 bucks for this.

With any Japanese restaurant, izakaya style or not, ordering sashimi is a must (unless you sense that the quality is questionable). However for $16, the portion was rather miserable, with really thin slices of salmon done more like a cerviche with a yuzu dressing. Tasted good but definitely not value for money.

The corn kaki-age are legendary and it deserves the applause even though it is $8 for 3 fritters (thinking about it, I should be able to get 5 stalks of corn with spare change). However, to get them in the form of a delicious piece of deep fried corn batter, that's priceless. Made perfect with some green tea salt.

Deep frying seems to be their speciality as their chicken karaage was just as good too. While the Wife noted the colour of the meat being a little darker than usual when she bit into one piece, I am giving them the benefit of the doubt and say it was due to marination and the use of thigh meat.

Go to the meat section and you will see a lot of premium breeds on offer. For pork, it is non other than the kurobuta, aka the berkshire or meat from the black pig. It is meant to be as marbled as the beef equivalent of wagyu. This was slow braised and grilled, eaten simply as it is with some spring onion and salt. For almost 20 dollars, it again seemed to be a little on the pricey side.

I have always loved ox tongue, especially during a good session of Korean barbeque. This was again grilled and topped with a spring onion dressing that matched it beautifully.

At this point, we realised that we had probably breached the 50 dollar mark per person and was nowhere full, after all it was all delicate items with no carbs to fill. Instead of ordering some carbs, we might as well go down the path of a meat eater and ordered another meat dish.

Another premium meat on offer, the wagyu and specifically the Sher Wagyu, a breed that is reared in Victoria. Graded at 7, the Porterhouse was melt in your mouth and just simply beautiful with a little pickled cauliflower. Worthy of a price tag of $33.

Overall, some people might say the place is more of a drinking hole, some might say the prepara! tion of food is too simple to warrant the hefty price tag but we say simple cooking is part of Japanese cuisine and we appreciated every single dish we had.

However at just under 70 dollars per pax, it is a nice to have meal opposed to a place that we can visit frequently.

Address and contact details:

Verdict: 4 stars out of 5 stars. While value for money is not exactly their forte, this place is worth a visit for its secretive entrance and underground location, the beautiful grilled meats and of course, the corn fritters.