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Yu.U
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Restaurant
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Melbourne
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Open:
Lunch and dinner Mon - Fri
Price:
Moderate
Score (/20):
15
Reviewed By
Sue Dyson and Roger McShane
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Phone Number:
+61 3 9639 7073
Address:
137 Flinders Lane (enter from Oliver Lane)
Melbourne, Victoria, 3000
Country:
Australia
Food Style:
Japanese
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It seems that in Melbourne every tiny basement is a candidate for another totally cool bar or café. Yu.U is one of the latest and coolest. There's hardly a hint that it exists, just a tiny sign next to an almost invisible door in a laneway just off Flinders Lane. You go down a set of fairly unprepossessing concrete steps and within moments you're transported to into a beautiful, zen-like modern Japanese-influenced spacious basement bar. The first thing you notice is the rich, highly-polished jarrah bar, behind which the buckwheat noodles that have centre place in Yu.U lunches are prepared. The comfortable chairs are upholstered with a deep blue fabric, all very beguiling and restful.The other charm of Yu.U is that you need make no decisions. Lunch is a beautifully-crafted set menu. When you arrive, you'll be served green tea. If it's a very hot day, it may be iced. Then, after a few minutes, an elegant charcoal-grey black edged tray is placed, with due reverence to its contents, in front of you.On the tray, several earthenware bowls surround a mat on which sits the aforementioned soba noodles. The tsuyu (dipping sauce) for the noodles is in a separate bowl. First, you season the cause to taste with finely-chopped spring onion and wasabi. Then you can begin to eat. You dip the noodles into this sauce and eat them with pleasure. In another dish is a small serving of tsukemono, a mixture of lightly pickled vegetables. In another, is shirumono (a bowl of soup which could be slightly different each day) and in a third is a bowl of rice with the day's cooked dish. This varies through the month. We've tried grilled slices of beef cooked with Yakiniku sauce one day and a delicious fritter of dried baby shrimp, onion and carrot on another. (You'll find a of these dishes for the month just outside the door, plus you can take a copy away.) Finally, the last bowl contains a single perfectly-prepared piece of fruit, apple on day and orange another on our visits. On our second visit part way through the meal we were also given another earthenware mug containing some of the stock in which the noodles had been cooked. Slightly starchy, some of this is added to your tsuyu after you've finished the noodles and then, like the soup, you drink it directly from the bowl.We've visited this restaurant many, many times now. Each time the food and service have been faultless. We have gradually become addicted to the night-time menu. The skewers of chicken skin are cooked with care and attention over charcoal. The small fish cooked so that you can eat them whole. The lovely, moorish edamame with their prickly exterior and soft, subtle interior are a particular treat that we order every time. And so on, for nearly every dish on the menu!
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