A Chef With Michelin Cred Turns His Attention to Japanese Hotpot at the CBD’s Oden

Subterranean Bourke Street restaurant Ishizuka opened in 2018 with a focus on Japanese kaiseki dining. A meal at one of the fine diner’s 16 seats costs $315 per person – without ordering any alcohol. But now, the team has opened a more casual restaurant just around the corner, turning its attention to a single dish: oden.

“Oden is deeply rooted in Japanese history and offers unparalleled comfort,” executive chef Katsuji Yoshino tells Broadsheet. The one-pot dish is pure comfort food: fishcakes, tofu, hardboiled eggs and vegetables such as daikon simmered in dashi stock. In place of dashi, at Oden, the team uses a chicken broth as the base. “The goal isn’t to modernise it for its own sake, but to make the tradition immediately legible and enjoyable [in Melbourne],” says Yoshino.

Both restaurants are led by Yoshino, who took over the kitchen at Ishizuka last year, bringing an impressive resume that includes time in kitchens in France such as three-Michelin-starred Troisgros and Pierre Gagnaire and two-Michelin-starred David Toutain. At Oden, he’s joined by chef Saki Yamamoto, who has over two decades of culinary experience and was most recently at Society.

To make the hotpot base, “we simmer locally sourced chicken for hours to create a rich, cloudy stock,” says Oden owner Melanie Zhang. She also notes its similarity to a Shantung-style Chinese chicken broth that’s “powerful, deeply savoury and full of body.”

The new restaurant is fully à la carte, a departure from Ishizuka’s tightly choreographed tasting menus. At the start of each meal, the team offers guests a small cup of broth. From there, you can choose from a list of seasonally changing items that, at open, includes enoki mushrooms, abalone, prawn gyoza and hanpen fishcakes (soft Japanese fishcakes typical of oden) – all served in the chicken broth.

The menu balances respect for tradition with an openness to experiment. Alongside typical ingredients such as daikon and chikuwa (tube-shaped fishcakes), Oden signatures include a caviar-topped tomato and cheese-covered avocado. “[We’re] creating a distinctive version of oden that honours Japanese heritage while appealing to Melbourne’s adventurous dining culture,” says Zhang.

Yakitori skewers designed to pair neatly with the oden pots – duck, eel and Wagyu among them – round out the offering. And one dessert, a firm custard and caramel pudding, caps off the meal.

As at Ishizuka, design is central. The team worked with Russell & George (the same architecture and interior design firm behind Ishizuka’s design) at Oden to create an Omotesando-inspired space with a colour palette that references hammered copper oden pots.

The drinks program is overseen by Nick Tesar, creative director of gin drinks at Four Pillars and a long-time Ishizuka collaborator. He designed a list built around Japanese highballs. “The crisp, refreshing profile of the highball is the perfect complement to the rich, warming notes of oden,” says Zhang. The “light, refreshing” house whisky highball is “exactly how we want Oden to feel.”

Oden
137 Bourke Street, Melbourne
(03) 8617 0239

Hours:
Daily midday–2.30pm; 5.30pm–10.30pm

theoden.com.au
@oden_australia