If you think all Collingwood’s restaurant action in happening on Smith Street, you’re wrong. Take a stroll down Cambridge Street, and you’ll stumble across the Japanese eating spot, Aka Siro.

The menu features 11 Teishoku dishes, all served with a crunchy salad of cabbage, iceberg lettuce and cucumber topped with an unusual but more-ish ‘dressing’ of pureed carrot and vinegar. Each dish arrives with a subtly flavoured miso soup and you can have as much steamed rice as you like. There are also sides which change daily – we were given the choice of either sardines with pickled cucumber, or sautéed slippery jack mushrooms.

Carnivores should try the slow-cooked pork belly and daikon in sweet sake sauce, grilled pork in egg and flour with Japanese barbecue sauce and mayonnaise, or the Ton-Katsu, whose description on the menu is straight to the point – “very popular deep fried pork cutlet”.

And for those who enjoy a spot of fusion, there’s the Hamburg – grilled beef and pork mince patty with tomato and Worcester sauce. We loved the sound of the Ni-Zakana (boneless white fish simmered in soy and sweet sake sauce) and the Sake-Mushi (drunken mussels, bok choy, mushrooms with shiso herb). There are also a couple of interesting vegetarian options. The drinks list is short and sweet and features Karita paper drip coffee, specialty teas and grape juice.

Aka Siro

106 Cambridge Street Collingwood

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