15 hours Ago By Callan Boys
14.5 / 20 How we score Japanese $$ $$ I swear I haven’t been turned away from a bar this often since late-night missions to Newtown’s Town Hall Hotel during uni days: 10pm on Friday – “Sorry, we’re at capacity”; 4pm on Saturday – “Maybe come back in three hours”; surely, 8pm on Wednesday? “If you don’t have a reservation, we’re probably full until midnight.” Bloody hell.
I could just book a table, sure, but according to Joji’s press release, sent to my inbox when the 100-seater opened in October, this is “Sydney’s newest rooftop bar, perched atop the Cartier flagship store”. I just want a quick sharpener after dealing with the hordes at David Jones, not a big night out that requires planning two weeks in advance. Joji’s popularity is surprising, even in a city that loves shiny new things, especially shiny new things on rooftops.
Perhaps it’s the central location, but I may have underestimated the loyalty of Esca Group’s regular customers, too. The hospitality business also operates N o ur in Surry Hills and two-hatted Aalia in Martin Place, both restaurants that are expanding conceptions of Middle Eastern cuisine while doing a healthy trade in Chablis and fish-bowl pours of rosé. When I finally cave and make a booking, Joji’s blackwood tables are crowded with good-looking, highly preened people.
It’s certainly an attractive place to be seen, featuring shiny metals popping against earth tones, polished timbers and cosy upholstery. Floor staff are warm and efficient and, after three visits, I’m yet to experience the kind of chilly service I was expecting after the initial back-and-forths at the door. Unlike at Nour and Aalia, the food at Joji is largely Japanese.
Aalia’s Paul Farag leads the kitchen, and three-bite snacks are very much the thing. Crisp-fried rice cakes ($14 each), say, topped with a mix of smoked eel, onions and crème fraîche – not dissimilar to rillettes – and kicked up with yuzu juice, Middle Eastern spices and salted perilla seed oil. It’s an eel dish for people who don’t like eel.
Minced bug and scallop is fashioned into simple, delicious rissoles served between squishy white bread ($32); robata-grilled chicken-wing skewers ($12 each) are brushed with a thumping glaze of roast chook garum and fermented chilli. The menu has enough length and breadth to wrangle a full dinner. A respectable sashimi plate ($49) is bright with tuna, salmon, kingfish and scallop; soy-marinated chicken karaage comes blistered in a potato-flour batter made extra buttery thanks to a spritz of beurre noisette ($21); a sizeable pork chop ($49) is grilled over coals and boosted by a salty-sweet, sticky tare sauce, although the pig’s rim of fat needed a more gentle rendering on one occasion.
I’m not quite sold on the mango sorbet mochi ($14), either: it comes covered in a skin that peels off in punctured swatches and makes the glutinous dessert look haunted. I haven’t met a cocktail here I didn’t like, though, and the deathly cold Shichimi ($28), made with mezcal, chilli-infused tequila and umeshu plum liqueur, is a bracing way to start the night or cap it at about 2am, which is when Joji closes every night of the week. A smaller bar menu is available after midnight and headlined by a $29 burger sauced with bolognese (yes) made with cooked-down trim and fat caps of Japan’s super-marbled A5 wagyu.
It’s intense as it sounds. No doubt a walk-in spot at the bar will be easier to nab as more shiny new things open in the CBD. In the meantime, you can’t blame a joint for being popular, and an online bookings platform is eternally better than a no-reservations policy and a queue.
If you’re going to plan two weeks ahead for one martini and a bowl of fried chicken, this is the place. The low-down Vibe: High-energy cocktail bar worth dressing up for Go-to dish: Scallop and bug sando with pickled cabbage mayo ($32) Drinks: Sharply crafted cocktails, plus sake, whisky and a clipped list of Australian and French wine, mostly in triple-digit territory Cost: About $150 for two, excluding drinks, caviar and sea-urchin supplements.
