Paul Farag reckons he’s become known as “the Middle Eastern chef” through his work at Esca, the hospitality group co-founded by Ibby Moubadder and Jorge Farah. As Esca’s executive chef, Farag oversees the menus at upscale Sydney diners Aalia and Nour, looking to the cultural traditions of regions throughout the Middle East and North Africa for inspiration.
With Joji, though, the chef has followed a different route, taking cues from Sydney’s love of Japanese cuisine and the group’s quest for a more approachable style of bar and diner.
“It was a no-brainer for me to play around with a fun bar concept and Japanese flavours,” Farag tells Broadsheet. “The inspiration for the menu is very much us trying to have a bit of fun, keeping it open-ended, so that if you want to come in and have a full meal, you can, but if you want to come in and have a drink and a couple of small bites to satiate the palate while you’re bar-hopping around, that’s also available.”
Accordingly, the menu gives equal weight to food and drinks. Its concise menu of small plates – divided into “raw”, “not raw” and “robata” – is presented alongside a drinks list that features whisky, wine, saké and agave, plus a handful of Japanese-inspired cocktails.
Here, Farag lets Broadsheet in on a limited-edition pairing: a lovely, taco-y raw tuna number matched with a crisp Toki Whisky highball. For six weeks only, you can try the combo in-house during a special Suntory venue takeover. From March 17 to April 27, Joji guests can order a signature Toki highball for $20 as part of an exclusive House of Suntory cocktail menu, with matched snacks by Farag.
For anyone who can’t get there – or if you want to recreate the experience at home – we’ve laid it out step-by-step below.
The dish
Whether you’re after big bites or small, Joji offers an inventive selection of Japanese flavours that work in tandem with its list of cocktails, highballs, saké and beer. Among the sandos, skewers and sashimi, Farag’s spicy tuna, wasabi leaf and togarashi has become a popular favourite. While the flavours are clearly Japanese, the approach and presentation are a little less straightforward. The idea behind this one, Farag says, was to create “a little taco kind of vibe”.
It’s the technique that makes Joji’s approach unique. While tuna is the star of the dish, instead of selecting one premium cut, the team works on getting the most they can from the whole fish. (It’s worth mentioning here that before arriving at Aalia, Farag was part of the opening team at Fish Butchery, by nose-to-tail pioneer Josh Niland.)
“Traditionally, like with sashimi, we’re cutting slices off the perfect tuna loin …[but] then we scrape down all the other bits that have sinew and aren’t great for raw applications,” Farag says. “It’s a Japanese technique where you peel off the layers of sinew and then you have these beautiful scrapings of tuna.”
For those making the dish at home, using a classic tuna loin is fine (“Just dice it and smash it up like you would like a tartare”), but the Japanese scraping technique can definitely be adapted to the home kitchen. “I teach my guys to use a spoon,” Farag says. “Going against the grain, you’re basically going to push through the meat from those layers of sinew.”
To serve, Farag coats the tuna in a house-made togarashi spice mix and spoons a quenelle of the resulting mixture onto a wasabi leaf to give it that taco-like feel.
The drink
At Joji, the team recommends something crisp, refreshing and classically Japanese to accompany this dish: a Toki highball. For Farag, the drink’s flavours – the bright fruit and spice notes in the Suntory Toki Whisky, and the grapefruit twist–line up to create a great match.
“I try to work with ingredients or flavour palates that will either match or give contrast to the dish,” he says. “With this particular dish, we use a citrus oil as part of the dressing, and then you’ve got the citrus notes in the Toki Whisky. That gives you a pairing right there. [The drink and the dish] also play into freshness with their citrus and apple notes.”
Like the dish itself, the highball turns on classic ideas with a couple of simple twists. “We’re adding a grapefruit twist to the soda,” Farag says. “Again, it’s got citrus notes and is really fresh and delicious. It’s got a slight bitterness from the grapefruit that’s beautiful with the brightness of the Toki Whisky.
“It’s just an easy-drinking highball – I’m a big fan of highballs.”
Paul Farag’s spicy tuna, wasabi leaf and togarashi
Prep time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
200g tuna, scraped and chopped into fine tartare
2g garlic powder
2g ginger ground
20g gochugaru
20g golden sesame powder
15g mustard powder
5g smoked paprika
5g black pepper
15g brown sugar
Salt, to taste
Lemon juice, to taste
20g furikake
6 fresh wasabi leaves
Method:
In a dry pan on medium heat, toast garlic powder, ginger, gochugaru, sesame powder, mustard powder and smoked paprika separately for 30 seconds, or until fragrant.
Grind toasted spices into a powder and add to tuna. Add pepper and sugar, season with salt and lemon, and mix well.
Using two spoons, make a quenelle out of the tuna mix.
Dust quenelle with furikake, and place in the centre of a washed wasabi leaf to serve.
Enjoy with a Toki Whisky highball.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Suntory Toki Whisky.
