Akiba, as always, is rushing with energy and a general sense of cool. It's youthful, varied, noisy and tightly packed - with quite a small indoor space and tables deliberately close and compact. The enclosed outside area feels like it effectively doubles capacity. We've always liked this about Akiba, but we're not regretting finding ourselves at an outside table tonight given the general low-level anxiety that we've all suddenly developed about other people. Outside dining looks set to be the choice of the COVID cautious for Canberra's long warm months.
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Does anyone not have a mobile phone? Does anyone leave their mobile phone at home when they go out to dinner? If such people exist, I'm not sure how they are accommodated at Akiba. Presumably there is a back-up system, like an actual physical menu somewhere, but we don't see sight nor sign of it tonight. Instead, you scan a barcode and read the menu on your phone. OK, so I tend to be on the phone constantly anyway since I'm taking notes all night, but I get irritated easily when I see anyone else sitting on their phone at dinner. Here, everyone has to squint at their phone and we're all in our own electronic bubbles while we work out what to eat. I don't like it.
And so the food! Well, the menu has dishes familiar to us from visits more than three years ago. They found a formula that kept the crowds crowding at Akiba, and they've stuck with it. Soft one-hand steamed buns, the folded style, filled with explosive tastes. Fried chicken with Kewpie mayo and sriracha ($9), marinated pork belly with slaw ($9), deep-fried soft-shell crab and mayo ($9). The chicken is hot, sour, sweet and crunchy. The crab is generous. These are really are great things to eat and I do believe there is a business opportunity for someone to offer simply sake, beer, and trays and trays of these pleasing buns. That sounds to me like a fine way to spend an evening.
We've also ordered edamame ($6), this pile of green beans, a great snack with a hot and salty spice, and slightly oddly also with lemon. And steamed Peking duck dumplings ($12). These are unusual. They're packed with shredded duck meat, which gives quite a dry result. It's flavoured with what tastes like five-spice and what we think is hoisin. In fact if you ate these blindfolded you would probably think you had been served a duck pancake.
Agedashi fried tofu ($14) is something we order wherever we find it, with results from the pedestrian to the exhilarating. Akiba's offering is somewhere in between. It doesn't have that alluring gelatinous thing that this dish often has but the tofu has been delicately fried and is in a light gently handled broth.
An odd dish follows. Salt and sichuan pepper squid with onsen egg ($21) is difficult to get our heads around. We can get pretty excited about sichuan pepper but it has its place, and I just don't know this is it. It adds that musty spice-drawer feel which feels at odds with fresh seafood pop. And the egg makes the dish super rich and unctuous.
The octopus ($18) also mixes seafood with creaminess in a way we find confusing. The octopus has been cooked on the Josper charcoal grill, the menu tells us, and is served atop duck fat potatoes with "charred onion mayo" and yuzu. The crushed potatoes are really smothered by the mayo, making them excessively rich, and the octopus is dominated by a lemon citrus flavour that is presumably the yuzu. But the taste is sharp and not really pleasant, and this dish feels like an idea that hasn't borne fruit in the execution.
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Our most successful main is beef short rib, with tamarind caramel and Asian herbs ($24). It's essentially a big chunk of super-tender gelatinous meat. There's a gentle citrus taste from the caramel and the meat is sitting in a bowl with a thin aromatic sauce. This is simple, generous and good.
As for desserts, we're quite fond of the lemon tofu cheesecake, with Anzac crumb and pandan jelly ($9). It's served as nothing like a cheesecake, but rather a rich creamy sauce, with crunchy pieces and squares of green jelly on top. It's a large bowl to get through and weird in its cheesecake intensity, but these Asian-style desserts are always somehow entertaining in their determination to eschew easy sweetness. The Valhrona chocolate with miso-salted caramel and "luxe gold" ($14) is firmly in the easy-to-like zone. It comes as a shiny chocolate dome, with caramel and ice cream inside, which we enjoy, and a biscuit base which is our least favourite part of this creation.
Sake is the drink of choice here, but Akiba also has a pretty smart wine list with the emphasis on Canberra wines, and a suite of Japanese beers. The staff is switched on, attentive, youthful. Lots of attitude and buzz from what has become a pretty slick operation.
Akiba
Address: 40 Bunda St, City
Phone: 61620602
Owners: Harvac Hospitality
Chefs: Executive chef, Johnon Macdonald, head chef, Jake Horyna
Hours: 11.30am to 11pm, seven days
Vegetarian: Lots of choices
Noise: Probably quite noisy when not in the era of COVID spacing
