At a pop-up in Adelaide in 2020, Chinese Mongolian chef and sommelier Charles Duan made durian pizza inspired by a Pizza Hut China special. Last year he served deep-fried camel’s milk curds at a Mongolian pop-up at Sleepy’s Cafe and Wine Bar.

Now he’s teamed up with chef Ken Ibuki and Flower Drum bartender Joey Tai for Roku Omakase. It’s a roughly 20-course, six-seat dinner every Monday at Ibuki’s Brunswick East Izakaya Kura for $175 per person.

“The idea is to bring two omakase into one. We’ve got Ken doing sushi and I do yakitori. It’s fun to see both sides in one night,” says Duan, who also works as the sommelier at fine diner Gaea. “We really want to showcase a bit of unusual, rare stuff.”

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Ibuki, a former Kisume omakase chef, oversees the first half of the menu, which is made up of nigiri. After an oyster to start and eight to 10 sushi pieces made using ingredients including scallop, toro and Wagyu, it’s Duan’s turn.

He mostly makes “things on sticks”. The menu changes monthly (unless either chef has something they want to add to the menu sooner), but dishes have included golden-eye snapper with garlic soy and lime, chicken wings with hot sauce, and shiitake rice. There’s also chawanmushi (savoury Japanese egg custard) between the sushi and yakitori sections of the menu.

Duan, who describes himself as “the stick man”, says some of the less conventional dishes he’s made include duck breast smoked with eucalyptus leaves. And a “cooked on the outside, raw on the inside” chicken meatball filled with fish tartare wrapped in shiso leaf to prevent it from cooking with the chicken.

“I’m always loud in the food,” says Duan. “It’s my personality. I want the flavor to be big, to be loud, to be balanced. If I put something in there, I want you to be able to taste it rather than just have an ingredient for the name.”

Diners are served an ochazuke (tea poured over a bowl of rice and toppings); yaki dango (grilled sticky rice dessert on sticks); and a changing dessert to round out the evening. Currently that’s a savoury-leaning burnt honey cake with a kabosu (a Japanese citrus) kurozato (Japanese brown sugar) glaze and a charred mandarin parfait dusted with seaweed powder.

Tai’s cocktail menu is bold to match. There’s a Pickle Wasabi Gimlet. And a Smoked Apple Old Fashioned made with Toki Japanese whisky, Laphroaig whisky, pu’er (a fermented Chinese tea), citrus bitters and blended apple syrup. The Koru team has also designed two food and drinks pairing options: a standard one for $85 per person and a premium pairing for $175 per person.

And if you don’t want to strap in for 20-plus courses or can’t get one of the six Roku seats, on Monday nights Kura also serves Tai’s cocktails and some snacks by Duan and Ibuki that can be ordered a la carte, to walk-in customers.

Roku Omakase at Kura
Shop 1/22/30 Lygon Street, Brunswick East
(03) 9972 1629

Hours:
Mon 5.45pm & 8.15pm
Bookings required for the Omakase experience

@kuramelbourne