Omakase Haku (Victoria Park)
A private 6 seater omakase which was one of the best meals of 2022 and one of the top Japanese meals we've had.
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Before reading ❗️
Who is this suited for?
Guests who appreciate omakase.
What type of food is available?
Omakase (with a focus on dry aged fish)
How much will it cost?
We paid $180pp (note there is no fixed price).
Where is it?
Omakase Haku is located near Victoria Park.
What're their socials?
Omakase Haku can be found on Instagram here.
The details 📝
Note: Omakase Haku is fully booked for 2023 and is not accepting any additional bookings or waitlist requests. Be sure to follow the Omakase Haku Instagram for the latest on bookings.
Visit #1
This one is a longer article. We've divided it up into two sections - cold and hot.
The Japanese term "omakase" means "I'll leave it up to you". In the context of food, it means the chef is in charge of selecting the dishes for your meal. Essentially, it is a "what you see is what you get". There is no menu at Omakase Haku. What you get is determined by what Chef Young believes is the best produce for the day. You won't find substitutions here, but Chef Young is able to accomodate for allergies ahead of time.
Omakase Haku is a "if you know, you know" type of place. As was Chef Young's previous restaurant which he ran. We loved frequenting his old restaurant and were genuinely saddened when he closed up shop. But we're also happy to have rediscovered his food. The food here isn't the type of food you'd eat every day (even if that was the case, at time of writing, Chef Young isn't taking any more requests).
Chef Young encourages you to "trust your tongue" and not to subscribe to any preconceived notions of taste. The "if you know, you know" nature of the place reflects to the ingredients and the cooking style. Like the atmosphere, there's a certain simplicity with the food - allowing the ingredients to speak for themselves. This isn't the type of place for diners who want to flex over their social media feeds, but rather a place where you learn to appreciate food and nerd out and learn about elements of Japanese cuisine.
As per Chef Young's request, we won't share the location (it's not too far from Vic Park). But if you're well versed with Perth's Japanese food scene and learn your 平仮名, you might see a clue or two on the Omakase Haku feed.
Step into Chef Young's venue and you'll be met with an intimate counter, seating six. The venue was completely revamped by Chef Young himself and is minimalistic.
Guitarists will also appreciate the cute Marshall CODE25 amp used to pump smooth jazz beats, the even cuter Marshall bar fridge and a couple of his guitars - including an LTD EC-401.
Growing up as a restaurant kid, my parents would always look underneath plates to see the manufacturer. If you're anything like the weirdos we are who.. like to peek underneath tableware to see where it's from, you're in for a treat here.
All the small details here were on point. The maple leaf chopstick rest is made by Tsubama Hutlery from Tsubama in Niigata prefecture. Lacquered chopsticks are made by Yamachiku from Tenama in Kumamoto prefecture. We knew we were in for a good night after seeing the attention to detail, before the food even started!
Cold
At the start, Chef Young presented the "treasure chests" for the night. We're not chefs, but we've done our best to identify the fish from memory (let us know bellow in the comments if we've misnamed anything!).
The first was Fremantle octopus.
Things went from 0 - 100 real quick. Next up, grouper with Tasmanian uni. Note the wasabi is wasabi root from Tasmania (Shima wasabi) which has a less "pungent" sensation compared to the usual everyday wasabi.
The uni was absolutely creamy and the lime zest was the cherry on top.
Next up was the first foray into "dry aged" fish. Dry ageing allows enzymes in the fish to break down connective tissue in the muscle and allows for moisture to evaporate. Ultimately, leaving you with super tender fish. The dry aged salmon was slightly kissed by the blowtorch. It made for a melt-in-your mouth experience, almost tasting like salmon belly (if you told us it was salmon belly, we'd probably believe you).
Chef Young proceeded to slice some akami and marinate it in soy sauce. The soy sauce is made in house. We'll get back to the akami later.
Toro in our experience has been sinewy and chewy, which makes chutoro (medium fatty tuna belly) our preference. But lo and behold, the magic of dry aging - it broke down all the sinewy parts of toro and made it taste like butter.
Australian wagyu and uni made for a very.. Luxurious tasting morsel. Notice the cute Dragon Ball Z kutani ware 🐉.
Chef Young proceeded to pull out a chunky of tuna he was dry ageing. He prepared some of the tuna blood line - a part of tuna that is commonly thrown away. More on this later.
After around 15 minutes, the akami was ready to it. It had a "jelly" like texture after marinating in soy sauce.
Some beautiful slices of toro were presented to us. Just look at the colour!
The last bit of tuna (for now) was an intricately braided piece.
The hiramasa and negitoro (leftover tuna) marked the end of the "cold" and now we were onto the "hot" dishes (ok, maybe the negitoro coming up is an exception to that).
The aburi'd hiramasa made for a tender, buttery experience. Contrasted with an abundance of sesame seeds, it got a "crunchy" almost "crispy" like texture.
To finish up the "cold dishes" - negitoro.
Nori (seaweed) is lightly torched.
The tuna is minced and presented inside the nori.
Hot
Note the cute Dragon Ball Z kuwani ware once again.
Next up - a uni, hotate and mushroom soup. It really allowed the sweet uni and hotate to show off their natural flavours.
Notice the cute Doraemon plate!
This tasted how it looked. Incredibly rich and fatty with a little saltiness from the karasumi.
With uni, anago and three different types of salmon caviar, this was probably the most elevated piece of tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette) I've ever had.
We're (finally) getting towards the end now. We now have a saikyo miso A.K.A. black cod miso (as popularised by Nobu Matsuhisa). This had a unique twist though. Served with a generous helping of cheese 🤩 (it worked).
We weren't joking when we said "generous".
Remember the tuna bloodline we spoke about earlier? After it was marinated in soy sauce, Chef Young went to cook it. According to Chef Young it makes for a great drinking snack. A little on the irony side (as expected) though with a cooked texture similar to beef.
One of the favourites for the night - anago tempura with Tasmanian uni, dubbed "French toast".
Another favourite - Australian wagyu with uni and tare. Simple, yet delicious.
And finally! The final course. Grouper tempura (from memory) in a broth which.. We can't remember the name of.
To finish up - a scoop of black sesame ice-cream. Chef Young doesn't claim to be a pastry chef, so this one comes from a tub.
To sum up, Omakase Haku was one of our top omakase experiences in Perth. Over our nearly 4 hour long dining stint, we learnt a bunch from Chef Young and had some fun conversation with him. It felt like we arrived as guests and left as friends. We're looking forward to (hopefully) dining with Chef Young again!
Visit #2
Following our initial visit in October 2022, we booked our second visit. 6 months later in February 2023. The theme for our subsequent visit was tuna. We couldn't fault any of the courses and were definitely "all tuna'd out" after nearly a dozen courses of tuna.
There's less commentary for our second visit. We'll comment on some of our favourites for the night. If you haven't already, check out our write-up of our first visit, where we go indepth about Chef Young and Omakase Haku.
New to Omakase Haku is Chef Young's dry ager.
A luxurious pairing of Hokkaido scallop, uni soy sauce and caviar.
You could literally see all the oil drip off the sake toro (fatty salmon0 as Chef Young seared it with the blowtorch. As you'd expect, this morsel melted in our mouthes.
Like the salmon, the hiramasa also dripped with the fatty omega 3 rich oil.
The last of the sashimi before our.. "Tuna degustration". The majority of the tuna was dry aged for 3 days.
A fancy chopping board rest, must we say.
The first - tuna bloodline. We had this during our first visit. Almost "beef like" in texture.
Next up - our favourite cut of tuna. Chutoro, which is medium fatty tuna. The chutoro along was fatty, rich and had the "melt in your mouth" feeling.
"Pure butter" is how we'd describe the dry aged toro. Absolutely butter like. Dry aging does wonders to the connective tissue.
An "off the beaten path" cut of tuna which Chef Young describes as "the tuna vein underneath the bloodline".
Gummy like in texture, soy sauce marinated tuna using Chef Young's in-house blend of soy sauce that he's aged for half a year.
Another less common cut of tuna - the cheek.
By the 7th or 8th piece of tuna, we were getting all tuna'd out!
Breaking the tuna streak with Paradise prawns. A wonderfully sweet soup.
The next course was probably one of the favourites of the night.
It was wild.
Never have I tasted so much foie gras in my life. The fattiness of the foie gras was offset by the lightly roasted, sweet nori. A little more sweetness came from the anago and saltiness came from the caviar.
Saikyo miso - very reminiscent of Chef Nobu Matsuhisa's famous "black cod miso". Like last time, the combo of the sweet miso and rich cheese just worked.
Anago tempura was served next and gave a bit of textural contrast. The uni soy sauce made a reappearance.
One could call the next dish of the evening, the "climax" dish. Undoubtedly, the richest dish of the night. The warmth from the seared A5 wagyu melted the beautiful foie gras. This left for a super clean plate.
A perfect dish to follow a rich dish. Tuna kama (tuna collar) with a in-house made vinegar. This dish was like "pulled pork".
There was barely any wastage of tuna. We finished up with negi toro - minced fatty tuna offcuts.
After 20+ courses, we reached the end. The fried figs were a great and refreshing way to and 3 hours of eating. Our second visit ended up being around 22 courses and we enjoyed it just as much as the first. Damage was $200 pp. Still very reasonable for what we got.
Now, time to make our third booking!
Before visiting 🚙
Where do I park?
There's plenty of free street parking outside and on adjacent streets.
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