After a decade running Kirribilli local favourite cafe Cool Mac, owner Eugene Leung was looking for a new challenge. Opening a second venture in Marrickville seemed all too easy – Leung went to school and grew up a few streets away from Kūrumac, his recently opened cafe.
“It’s a bit like coming home for me,” he tells Broadsheet.
Kūrumac, which means “Cool Mac” in Japanese, continues the East-West fusion of its northern sibling, and Cool Mac’s DNA is evident throughout. Like at the Kirribilli cafe, there’s hip-hop and jazz on the speakers. There’s a colourful mural by Sydney collective Ar-Chive overlooking polished black tables and a white La Marzocco machine running Campos Coffee. A raw plywood bench completes the space, which was last a Peruvian restaurant.
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SIGN UPLeung has brought across chef Jun Okamatsu and manager Dika Prianata from Kirribilli to run the place, and the trio is cautiously optimistic about their future here. With a dearth of Japanese cuisine in the area and an insatiable demand for more cafes, Kūrumac’s soulful spin on Japanese comfort food aims to plug both holes.
“It’s the stuff my chef and my wife would look forward to when they go back to Japan to see their families,” says Leung. “It’s also what’s going be different to what you might find at a regular Japanese restaurant.”
The all-day meals are light and emulate the morning staples you might find in family-run joints all over Japan. Expect dishes such as onigiri (rice balls) packed with pickled mustard greens, or mixed vegetable tempura with green tea soba noodles. Then there’s the spicy cod roe melt – a toasted, inch-high cut of shokupan (Japanese milk bread) spread lightly with peppery roe and grilled with tasty cheese.
“It’s definitely an acquired taste,” says Leung of the dish, which is common in the self-serve bakeries in Tokyo subway stations. For the Japanese, explains Leung, it has the same cult status as avo on toast does for Australians – a simple, filling and smashable breakfast. “We weren’t 100 per cent on it being on the menu but three tables ordered it just this morning.”
For lunch, there are salads and a couple of heartier rice dishes, including a velvety ox tongue curry and the tempura eel, which you can steep in a green tea broth to your taste. Chef Okamatsu’s sushi training is at play in everything; dishes are gorgeously plated on handmade ceramics from Japan.
The sweets cabinet is decked out with pastries by The Bread and Butter Project, and MaPo Gelato from Newtown guest stars on the drinks list. Add its fior de latte flavour to an iced latte, or go for the hojicha green tea gelato shake.
Leung says Kūrumac has already copped requests for other Japanese rarities such as omurice (an omelette that contains fried rice) and Cool Mac’s popular ramen.
“It’s been great hearing the locals saying they’ve been dying for a place like this,” he says. “It just reassures us at that we’re doing something right.”
Kūrumac
107 Addison Road, Marrickville
Hours:
Daily 7am–3.30pm
This article first appeared on Broadsheet on October 4, 2019. Menu items may have changed since publication.