Winter calls for hot pot
At Izu Village Restaurant, come try a traditional, all-you-can-eat hot pot experience, dunking delicate meats in a sizzling pot of broth. You have 90 minutes, go!
Last week, Zomato invited me to check out Izu Village, a traditional Japanese hot pot restaurant in the Town Hall-end of Sydney’s CBD. An all-you-can-eat trip to Tokyo? Of course, I’m keen. But given the only thing I can cook is baked beans, sometimes fried eggs, I brought Jude along to do all the heavy-lifting at this DIY dinner.
All-you-can-eat hot pot
Izu Village Restaurant opened about six or so months ago, right in the epicentre of the construction chaos of George Street. But walk up the stairs and you completely forget about the bollards and bunting, finding yourself in a space that’s light and bright. The Japanese minimalism, on point.
The situation at Izu is for $48 (lunch) or $68 (dinner) you get to order as many meats, noodles, sushi, sides and desserts as you can stomach in 90 minutes.
To start with, your yin and yang-shaped hot pot is filled with two broths (there’s a choice of 10). We chose the tom yum and traditional sukiyaki – apparently the latter is a crowd favourite and you can understand why. The sweet broth of 13 kinds of stewed vegetables and grilled marrow bone, mixed with a free range egg, complements the meats and noodles like tonic does gin.
Next you decide on your noodles. We went safe with udon.
Then you choose your sides. At this point I became a little overwhelmed. Potato salad, soft boiled eggs, vegetable salad, jellyfish salad, edamame, seaweed salad, pickled cucumbers, mushroom salad, oh my!
And I haven’t even got to the vegetable buffet, sashimi platter, self-serve non-alcoholic drink station and endless parade of desserts yet. Or the fact that you can just keep ordering more.
Izu Village Restaurant is…
Fun, with broth splashed everywhere, a table bursting with colourful little dishes and the fact you get to play chef for the evening. Well, Jude gets to play chef. And he was the man dunking our tender, thinly-sliced pork shoulder, lamb and wagyu in the bubbling hot pot.
For me, the highlights were the wagyu chuck roll, with udon noodles, in the sukiyaki broth; the incredibly fresh sashimi platter; and the assorted sushi rolls (of which we had three…).
Just, heavens to Betsy, make sure you save room for dessert!
Izu Village Restaurant | 630 George Street, Sydney, New South Wales
