KU-O, SUNNYBANK

KU-O is an adorable Japanese restaurant on the edge of busy Market Square with beautiful decor, intimate booths, and colourful Japanese paintings along the walls. The place isn’t sleek and stylish like most modern Japanese restaurants, but looks more or less traditional and offers a comfortable and cosy atmosphere. It’s a lot more quiet inside compared to other restaurants in the area and really makes you forget about the manic scrambling to find a car park along with the notorious crowds of Market Square just outside.  There is limited seating and I can see this being a problem for peak dinner time and weekends, but for a Friday lunch, we had no problems getting a booth.

True to Japanese hospitality, we were greeted enthusiastically by all the staff as we entered, shown to our table by our waitress who offered us menus and left to let us ponder over the choices. KU-O offers a variety of meals such as Donburi, Yakitori, Oden, Sashimi, Agemono and Udon noodles soups. They even have meal sets to choose from as well as a couple of salad options.

We started off with a serve of cuttlefish oden and crab meat croquettes. There were only two pieces of cuttlefish balls but costing $3 we weren’t expecting any more than what we got. I still think it was a good choice as they were tasty and left us with a nice hot bowl of soup to accompany the rest of our meal. The crab meat croquettes were crispy but I was a little disappointed in finding them mostly hollow with only a small amount of a paste like consistency within. The texture and lack of crab flavour made them a little sickening after one, which was a shame as I was really looking forward to them.

We were just after some simple lunch so decided on rice dishes; fresh salmon donburi for my partner and seared salmon for myself. The serving sizes were quite generous and both came with their own side dishes consisting of various pickles. I quite enjoyed my dish, there was a decent amount of seared salmon atop the rice along with more mayonnaise than any other restaurant would offer, free of charge. I had a sneaky taste of my partner’s raw salmon and believe it could benefit from being a little fresher, however, the flavours were still good and there was nothing to really complain about.

As for drinks, I do not recommend this place for coffee, my partner’s latte tasted like it came out from a domestic espresso machine with about 5 teaspoons of sugar added to it. I found it more amusing rather than disappointing though, it seems like it’s placed on the menu for variety and that nobody really orders coffees from there anyway...well, apart from my foolish boyfriend. They have a nice list of hot and iced teas as well as their “famous” frappes. I was a bit deterred from ordering a frappe due to the price, but they do look amazing and are gigantic.  I suggest maybe sharing with a friend if you were to order one.

Overall, I was quite satisfied with my experience. Service was pleasant enough, especially compared to what you usually get from elsewhere in the square. The waitresses were friendly and competent and food came out before I could even finish admiring the decor. There is definitely room for improvement but I was content enough with my food that I’ll quite happily pop back in for lunch (and a frappe) if I’m around the area.

Food: 6.5/10
Atmosphere: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 7.5

- wd