Eat. @ Meshiya

200 Lonsdale St, Melbourne 3000 ph : (03) 9654 6242

Tucked in the Laneway coming off Lonsdale St that leads into the QV Building, Meshiya is an oddly shaped restaurant that serves fairly decent Japanese fare for the price they charge.  Their menu is jam packed full of the usual entrees and mains you would expect in a Japanese restaurant.  They have an impressive list (with photos!) of their Menu Sets which is sure to please most diners.  We have dined here twice in the last few weeks, and on both occasions the experience have been quite pleasant.  As a consequence we sampled quite a few dishes, but not all at once, in case you're wondering how our family managed to eat so much in one sitting!

Looking at the corridor sitting area.

As usual the first thing I tried was the Chef's menu.  I like to try a variety of things and at just over $20, this set gives you exactly that. 

Set menu with beef eye fillet, yakitori chicken,

sashimi and prawn tempura.
The Chawanmushi (steamed egg in teacup) was very pleasant.



The moving bonito flakes on the Agedashi Tofu fascinated the kids.  The taste however was not as impressive as the tofu was quite coarse and lacked flavour even with the sauce.

Hubby's Tempura Udon was probably too small to fill him up, but okay if you ordered some sides and entrees.  I'm not a fan of soggy tempura-ed prawn or vegies so any opinion of mine would be negative in a very biased way.

The Pork Belly Ramen was well received by the kids.  The soup was pleasant without knocking your socks off.  The pork belly was not as soft as it could be.

We were not very impressed with the gyozas here as the tip of the pastry was not well cooked on a few of the dumplings.

Clearly undercooked ends on some of the gyozas ;(

The Unadon was pleasant enough but broke the rule we have about Unadons - cooked carrots and bean shoots under the unagi.  Why add extras and ruin an already great thing?  Again a side salad here would be more pleasant if the need for vegetable accompliments are required for the dish.

The Duck Udon offered a good alternative meat option for the noodle bowls.  The kids definitely liked this better than the belly pork, and the duck is cut in very manageable slices for them to eat.

Finally we come to the dish that will bring me back to Meshiya in the future.  The Chirashi Sushi Bowl was topped with sashimi that was fresh and well prepared.  It's a relatively healthy dish, and although the rice was a little gluggy right at the bottom, it was low fat and perfect for an early dinner for me.

The restaurant was like 2 little rooms connected by a very, very narrow sitting corridor in between.  The first time we brought our pram and there really was only one table we could sit at, with the pram parked behind our chairs.  Fortunately, Baby very obligingly slept through our dinner so it wasn't a problem.  The second time we ditched the pram and took turns holding bubs (therefore choosing dishes like the Chirashi Rice and Unadon which we could eat with one hand) and sat at one of the rather cramped tables for four.  Overall there are some dishes which were not well executed, but certainly others that are well priced and hit the spot.

Eat.Play.Shop. Recommends : the Chirashi Rice

Give it a miss : if you're dining with a large party, or have lots of kids <1 as the restaurant is quite cramped and it would be quite difficult to manage comfortably.  And oh, ditch the pram!

Toilets - Use the ones in QV Building.