Sushi Teppan (315 Glebe pt rd),

Firstly I would like to introduce myself as a guest writer. I am the daughter of Rosa or Stephen or Janet or Dave. The reason for this uncertainty is I am still not sure I understand the elaborate identity swapping that has been effected in the name of identity protection.


Wednesday night, and after careful calculation (a week or two off and I could have ended up at the Ancient Briton!), I invite myself to dine and write as a guest of eatingglebe at Sushi Teppan (315 Glebe pt rd), a tiny hole in the wall restaurant that you'd never have noticed unless you use public transport in Glebe. Sushi Teppan is situated at the bus stop where the 431 and 433 fly in and out as unpredictably as a rock star.
A little glass door opens into a corridor shaped restaurant, with a small display cabinet of sushi at the front and four or five tables behind it, with the kitchen at the back. Stephen keeps going on about how the restaurant reminds him of the 'tardis' effect. Apparently some Dr Who reference that I am sure I met in a crossword once before but doesn't really mean much to me.
As we sit down I order green tea, needing something to heat me up quick smart, as I am soaked to the bone.

It arrives promptly, served in a way that is very typical in China-not sure about Japan-simply

tea-leaves in the mug topped with water so that sometimes you have to discretely spit out tea-leaves. The tea is genmaicha, roasted rice tea that has a nice nutty flavour, but the roasted rice adds another dimension of difficulty to the spitting.

A small dish of complementary endamame comes with the tea-great!


The entrees

We order some entrees to share. A seaweed salad, not different to seaweed salad in your everyday sushi joint, very nice. Stephen describes it as crisp, lightly dressed and delucious. I agree.

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Vegetable tempura-crisp and yum. A plate of sashimi is salmon and tuna sitting on a bed of strange crunchy and gelatinous noodle things. I want to ask what it is but I forget. Various opinions around the table include jellyfish, a type of seaweed and plastic. I try hard not to think about the sustainability problems of salmon and tuna and enjoy my overfished delight with generous measures of wasabi and pickled ginger (of which there is plenty). The last entree we order is salmon belly sushi. It is very delucious but I can't help but be a little a bit disappointed because it's really just salmon sushi. 'Belly' makes me think it will be something exciting, different and special. On the up side it was carefully made : a warm slice of salmon laid on top of a little sausage of sushi rice bound by a seaweed belt. The salmon is very nice and oily, in the way that salmon should be.


The Mains

We all order different mains, so get ready-there are six of them!
Three different teriyakis, teriyaki salmon, teriyaki seafood and teriyaki spare ribs. All arrive on a sizzling hot plate (as a point of interest, you might like to know that the hot plate in Japanese is called a 'teppan'. I guess that's where the restaurant got its name then. Teppan derives from the Chinese tie ban meaning iron board or plank. The Chinese really did invent everything)
Janet's teriyaki salmon is all salmon and nothing else, and is very nice. Stephen's teriyaki seafood has prawns, fish and

a mussel. It is hidden under a generous pile of vegetables (good for the bowels). Stephen says it tastes like teriyaki. It's not too sweet but the sauce is a bit strong. Janet agrees. I have a taste and I concur. Dave says his spare ribs are the best he's ever had. He adds he's never had them before, but he can't imagine any better. Rosa has chilli octopus, which also comes on a sizzling hot plate. It is satisfyingly chilli and the octopus are very tender and very small, probably baby octopus (I won't mention the sustainable fishing issue again even though I want to). Unfortunately it is overly sweet. All these meals are served with a small bowl of rice. Stephen likes rice, and he likes this rice especially. He says it is particularly good. It is excellently cooked; it is plump, dry and tasty. It is good because it clings without being sticky. Stephen really likes rice. He asks the waitress where it comes from, and she says it's American. We are all surprised by this response. These meals also come with a small miso soup and a little dish that has some tiny little strange things in it that no one can really work out what they are. Maybe pickled peanuts and a slice of Japanese omelettes. The miso and the unknowns are advertised on the menu as 'two free side dishes'. If I were a stickler for the rules I might say this is somewhat misleading...
Tee's unagi don (smoked eel on rice) described by Tee as a nice, typical unagi don, although it's a little on the small side. He does admit that at only $10, it is value for money. There's a couple of nice extras in the bowl, a little pile of pickled ginger and a little mound of the same delucious seaweed salad from the entree, and Tee appreciates this. 
As everyone else ordered rice dishes, I took it upon myself to sample the restaurant's noodles. Zaru soba is a dish I first discovered when I was in Japan in a stinking hot summer. It's a cold dish of soba noodles with a delucious dipping sauce. Very simple but very delucious. In Japan it was usually served as a plate of noodles with an accompanying bowl of sauce. When you finish a waiter is meant to come and fill the sauce bowl with a broth, which you drink to finish off the meal. Every time I have had it since in Australia, this has never happened. It just all comes in a bowl. At Sushi Teppan they gave me a tiny little bowl with some chopped shallots to place on top and a generous dollop of wasabi. I liked this touch. This dish is much more suited to summer time, but it was still very nice and refreshing and the noodles had a pleasant chewiness.


The desserts

The dessert options were few but good. A choice of green tea ice cream or black sesame ice cream. We order three of each. The ice cream comes in a little plastic cup-not made on site-but very very nice. The flavour of both is pleasant, not too sweet. The black sesame is a little bit crystallised, Tee astutely notices that the use-by date on the side of the cup ismuch closer for the sesame; it obviously does not improve with age.


The cost

The meal comes to $138 for all six of us. For $23 a head we are all very satisfied. This includes corkage at $2/head.

The verdict

I would go back in a flash.