Restaurant review: Sakura's Japanese fare gets the thumbs-up from a young diner

The clientele is a mix of ambling tourists and locals, including some very content family groups and the vibe is most relaxing, dare I say it, even Zen, more so when we are greeted with complimentary green tea.

Sat, 04 Mar, 2023 - 12:47

Joe McNamee

Sakura
38 MacCurtain Street, Cork
Tel: 021 4508228
sakurajapaneserestaurant.ie
Opening Hours: Mon to Fri, 4pm-10.30pm; Sat/Sun, 12.30pm-10.30pm (lunch, then dinner from 3.30pm)

Though I harbour no favourites, loving all three of The Progeny equally, with La Daughter on the cusp of her teens and still my most frequent culinary companion of the three, I am beginning to at least concede to the truth in the old saw that boys have their mums, girls have their dads.

My two sons are mighty men for the grub, even accompanying me to Michelin-starred restaurants, approaching delicacies with the same fearless gustatory vigour they apply to dispatching a dirty great kebab, but my truest comrade in cuisine has more often than not been LD, since she could first toddle in my wake around the farmers’ markets.

Perhaps the dynamic of our relationship is built on the eternal and endlessly frustrating challenge of trying to sell her on new flavours and foodstuffs for, unlike the boys who’d eat their own legs with salt, she is a young lady of singular and pronounced tastes in all aspects of life, choosing her passions with care and then reluctant to leave them. Once it was football and a relentless drive to crack her own keepy-uppy record; now she is fast becoming a mascara-ed majority shareholder in Lush, the inordinately fragrant beauty products chain. It is the same with food: Each new passion is entirely her own, never to be foisted upon her and she grimly resists my constant endeavours to establish new edible frontiers.

So, at farmers’ markets she would eat raw shiitakes, anchovy-stuffed olives, and cake pops; at home mostly porridge, fruit, and pasta. She now loves lean beef, finds veganism irritatingly bizarre (not a position we share). She dislikes fish other than salmon, yet adores sushi.

We are also both obsessive readers and an ideal Saturday involves a swim, followed by a tramp around the city’s bookshops, then sushi (actually nori rolls) from the Maki Sushi Rolls stall in the English Market. Maki Sushi Rolls play it straight, nori-covered rice rolls cleaving strictly to a mainstream menu —from vegan tofu, to vegetarian to raw and cured fish—along with a parallel offering of poke bowls. LD is only ever interested in one specific item: California roll, dressed crab, cucumber, avocado, in rolled in sushi rice, sealed with nori seaweed, no wasabi, one or two drops of soy sauce, thank you very much. And then it is on to Rose Daly’s wondrous Chocolate Shop stall for dessert.

But, on a recent weekend, swimming happened on a Sunday instead — bookshops were open but The English Market was closed. Then I recalled Sakura on MacCurtain St. In a city where we are privileged to have the wondrous Takashi Miyazaki fashion an astonishing benchmark for Japanese cuisine — both street food, at Miyazaki, and Michelin-starred kaiseki, at Ichigo Ichie — I have been guilty of looking little further than these two splendid establishments for Japanese food so on a clement early afternoon in spring, we strolled across the North channel of the Lee and on to what is fast becoming one of Ireland’s hottest hospitality thoroughfares.

Sun streaming through the window, the Japanese-themed interior of Sakura, an abundance of timber, deployed with elegant simplicity and allied to a cherry blossom motif, is a pleasingly becoming space. The clientele is a mix of ambling tourists and locals, including some very content family groups and the vibe is most relaxing, dare I say it, even Zen, more so when we are greeted with complimentary green tea.

Sakura is most definitely in the street food bracket — Ichigo Ichie’s kaiseki style is from a different epicurean planet entirely — and the menu can’t be faulted for brevity, covering a swathe of Japanese street food styles: Along with all the variations of ‘sushi’ (nigiri, sashimi, norimaki, and ura maki), they also offer tempura (battered and deep fried seafood and veg), teppanyaki (grilled meats and fish), and noodles and there is an additional hefty section of “side dishes”. Bento box specials beginning at €15.99, drawing from all categories appear to offer especially good value.

LD goes hog-wild crazy and opts for ura maki California roll, eschewing the usual seaweed of norimaki, rice rolls instead just rolled in sesame seeds. It is crab stick rather than salad, with kewpie mayonnaise adding acidity and is perfectly fine, though I agree with LD who reckons fresh-dressed crab wins out every time.

I have never knowingly refused tempura and a seafood-and-veg combo is very generous, offering large chunks of fresh pepper, aubergine, asparagus, and shimeji mushrooms as well as squid, prawn, and haddock, with a sweet dipping sauce. It is a meal in itself and sinfully tasty, even if I’d prefer the batter a little on the lighter side, and, what’s more, it pairs wonderfully well with a divine wakame salad, the sea vegetable retaining a toothsome bite and dressed in a splendid sweet and savoury blend of soy, rice vinegar, and Mirin with a sprinkling of sesame seed and chilli.

LD enjoys steamed, pan-fried gyoza filled with savoury mince pork, but the casing is a tad glutinous and rubbery; my crisp, sweet, and comforting pumpkin croquette topped with dill-heavy mustard is far better. Overall, generosity of portions means we order more than we can eat.

A simple drinks list offers a few sakes and beers (Asahi, Kirin Ichiban, Tiger, and Singha, all good quaffers with Asian cuisines), more appealing than the six wines, three white, three red, none of which scream, “drink me!” so we instead, at LD’s urging, embrace our inner purity and drink sweet aloe juice which turns out to be fun, delicious, and refreshing.

Miyazaki remains the Japanese street food king on Leeside — chef-proprietor Takashi Miyazaki delivers even casual dining to an exceptionally high level — but Sakura is a lovely little space offering simple, tasty food, great fun with a couple of beers for an easygoing evening with friends. But that’s only my opinion; LD’s is the one that really counts. “Yup,” she says, “thumbs up, we’re going back.”

The Verdict