Mishy absolutely loved the field green salad indicating it had authentic Japanese flavour. I also loved it because of the dressing, which I failed to note the spelling of but I’m pretty sure it’s “Matsuhisa” dressing... turns out Matsuhisa Nobu is the founder of the chain and this is a signature soy-onion dressing. Mishy also loved the Greek salad; I agree it was excellent and a “Village” Greek also with onions and of course no lettuce. Mishy also praised the prime rib which was very tender and moist and she loved the flavouring of it, though although that turned out to be mostly black pepper, possibly with a taste of some other variety of peppercorns... sometimes just black pepper is enough as it’s quite versatile. There is nearby wasabi pepper gravy which was almost excellent and went together well, but like the soy sauce had the misfortune of being salty. Spicy cucumber salad was better than expected but unfortunately the heat is a little persistent. Roast potato medley is tiny new potatoes and were delicious. Unfortunately I didn't care for the lobster miso soup; regardless of it being a known variant, I don't find that the two flavours get along very well, and it was missing something in the savour and bite of the actual miso paste; it seems to be more a home-cooking thing to get rid of leftover lobster pieces and I haven’t encountered it in restaurants. Miso mashed potatoes worked better as the miso added a creaminess and warmth to the flavour.
Being brunch there are breakfast things such as scrambled eggs, bacon and sausages. The bacon was oily but nicely flavoured, not salty, and with a hint of maple. The chicken sausages were absolutely the best I've ever had with excellent seasoning. Unfortunately the pork sausages had a gamey pork flavour, although maybe that's the way they're supposed to be but I still didn't enjoy it.
Chicken kushiyaki with yuzo kosho and ginger garlic yakitori were delicious although the flavour was a bit muted, but Mishy loved them so I will give full marks; they included fire-roasted red pepper spacers which were a nice complement. Unfortunately I missed trying the nearby sauce for them. Roasted heirloom carrots with maple ponzu butter we both loved. Tater tots? Yes, and they were quite good. Roast brussels sprouts were mostly quite good although areas were a bit over-roasted and burnt. White fish ceviche with tamarind dressing was quite good in that it contained contrasting flavours and textures which got along quite well; it had a nice tart flavour.
Red tuna nigiri was fantastic as would be expected. It had some fattiness and appeared to be midway between chutoro and akami. Salmon nigiri was also fantastic, although again I was not impressed with the soy sauce as the salt overpowered a lot of the flavour. I could tell the difference between this and other places so the extra expense seems to be somewhat worth it. Yellowtail nigiri is accurately labelled and was the equivalent of red snapper and was excellent. The nigiri have a tiny dollop of salsa or onion mince on top. Whatever they do, it had no fish odour and a very pleasant aroma as well as being very tasty. I ended up having three plates of sushi as I enjoyed it so much, especially with that seemingly-real wasabi. Mishy was less fortunate in her findings and described the sushi offerings as “mediocre” and that suggested Nobu was just getting rid of à la carte fish that didn’t sell.
For dessert, Mishy absolutely adored the blood orange crème brûlée and even the looks of it told me it was worth the praise. I tried it and it was an unusual flavour combination but worked well, which was not always the case. Unfortunately, she then said the pistachio tart was dried out. They are tiny so are prone to it if they are not refreshed regularly. She thought that the the lime and shiso cheesecake was heavenly. I didn't find it that good but I did enjoy tho it had an odd aftertaste, probably the shiso. So did the matcha gelato which I didn't enjoy as much as I thought it would, as the flavour was too far down on the spectrum and reminded me of wakami or nori, which is not a good flavour for ice cream. I’ve enjoyed matcha many times and it was never like this. The bean bun with red bean filling (didn’t note the exact name) had this bizarre powder on it which actually tasted like algae; once one gets past this the filling was pretty good but not before.
The Thai tea panna cotta was excellent, finally, a good flavour combination which made it exceedingly creamy. The vanilla gelato was also very good, specially with the crumbled cookie and lotus biscoff toppings. Matcha tart was the same matcha as the gelato but it worked better in this. Cheese tart was the best of the bunch. Cake with chocolate ganache was good. There was chocolate bread pudding with a strange miso sauce, and Mishy didn't like it. I don't know about the sauce being with miso either, as it is not a dessert flavour.
I am dreading this final part of the review, the rating, as it’s not going to go over well with some readers, but I have an algorithm I’ve developed over a dozen years and I need to stick to it. Although there were some superlatives especially the sushi/nigiri, there were enough shortcomings in this to pull the food down to 6.5 on its own. I appreciate that there’s a genuine attempt to be creative and original, but it has to work. However, it gets much worse: Nobu is around $40-50 too expensive given the offerings and $5 no-refill pop, with the exception of the genuine wasabi (which I also include with the sushi/nigiri, and ate about $1 worth) and other than it, none of the ingredients at least that I could determine seem necessary to custom import at expense. I’ll give the benefit of the doubt and make it $40. There were no beef dishes other than the tiny pieces of prime rib, ie no beef teriyaki. There was no sashimi, which can be had for roughly a third this cost elsewhere and at passably or better quality. Unfortunately this leaves Nobu with no points at all after factoring in value, an unfortunate first which I hope to not repeat. At least the service was excellent.
Rating: 6.5 / 10 - 8 value adjustment = -1.5 / 10 = 0 / 10
