Shusai Mijo omakase restaurant in Fitzroy

As much as I’m grateful for the recent proliferation of high-end omakase restaurants in Melbourne, I’d be lying if I said one was vastly different or superior to all the others. There are, of course, exceptions: the Good Food Guide three-hatted Minamishima in Richmond remains undefeated in terms of quality, and Uminono is lunch only, run by a French dude and much cheaper than the alternatives. Some venues are focused almost entirely on fish, and some are more in it for the spectacle. But many are similar.

That doesn’t make it hard to enjoy a meal somewhere like Shusai Mijo, the new omakase spot in Fitzroy, but it does make it somewhat difficult to write about in a way that’s vastly different from similar venues I’ve reviewed in the past couple of years.

The virtue of a place like this comes down to the same basic questions. Is the fish handled properly, and is the variety interesting? Is it exorbitantly expensive, and if so, is it worth the price? And finally, does the chef rely too much on dry ice and blowtorch theatrics, or are they more interested in the food?

(This last question is almost unfair, given that many guests likely to invest in a meal like this are looking for boasting rights via social media, and those kinds of theatrics help a lot on that front. Nonetheless, I maintain that sometimes these things detract from the food.)

Shusai Mijo has a few distinctions that set it apart. For one, the restaurant’s main players – chef Jun Oya, sous chef Takuro Abe and sake sommelier Matthew Ng – all previously worked at Warabi, which earned two hats straight out of the gate when it opened (with Oya at the helm) in early 2022. At Warabi, I was especially taken with Oya’s dashi, which danced its way across the menu in various forms.

Shusai Mijo is trying to position itself as Melbourne’s only kappo-style Japanese restaurant, although that claim is hard to quantify. Kappo, which translates roughly to “to cut and cook”, is a less formal style of Japanese omakase, and I’d argue that it’s what almost every omakase in Melbourne embodies. Kappo isn’t purely sushi and sashimi. It is intimate, with the chef doing all that cutting and cooking in front of you, and it is generally seasonal.

If the vibe of Shusai Mijo is supposed to be less formal, I’m not sure you’d know it. There’s the same hushed reverence for the chef as he appears from behind the kitchen curtain, the same gliding service from Ng found in other high-end spots, the same sense that you’re in a rarefied room and you’re lucky to be there.

Oya certainly earns that reverence. His beautiful dashi shows up almost as soon as you sit at the eight-seat counter for dinner ($165 a head Tue-Thu; $250 a head Fri-Sat) in the sakizuke, a chilled dish that combines the most delicate seafood available that day with a glossy umami-intense jelly made from dashi. When I ate it, the jumble of firefly squid, snow crab and Japanese octopus was sweet, bouncy and ethereal.

From there, you move on to sashimi, perhaps blue-eye from New Zealand or buri (yellowtail) from Japan. In terms of the fish portion of my omakase diagnosis – is the fish handled well and is the variety interesting – the answers are yes and yes.

A silken chawanmushi follows, topped with thinly sliced Victorian abalone, baby scallops and maitake mushrooms, and it’s one of the better versions of the Japanese savoury egg custard I’ve had – Oya’s great talent is with texture and subtlety when it comes to liquid and liquid-adjacent substances.

This is true, also, of the miso soup that accompanies the sushi course, a portion of the evening in which Oya hands you one glorious bite of raw fish after another, much of it over barely warm rice.

The seasoning is occasionally off, though – I found the scampi slightly over-salted, detracting from its natural sweetness, and the otoro – tuna belly that was finely diced and served over rice – had a whisper of truffle or truffle oil or something similar that overrode the taste of the fish.

But for the most part, the fish was perfectly aged and sliced, every grain of rice shone, and the swoon factor was high.

Ng’s sake list is a thing of great wonder, made all the better for his knowledge and excitement in sharing it. It’s just long enough to provide range without being overwhelming, and I have photo after photo on my phone of bottles we sampled that I plan to seek out later.

On Friday and Saturday nights, the price increases, and the menu format is focused less on sushi and more on luxury ingredients. Foie gras, wagyu and caviar all make appearances.

The $165 menu here is one of the more affordable high-end omakase experiences in the city, and it is no less exciting than meals that can cost almost double; this alone makes Shusai Mijo stand out.

The issue now will be booking a seat at that counter – the less expensive Tuesday to Thursday omakase is booked out through May.