MESHIYA JAPANESE RESTAURANT

QV - 200 Lonsdale St, Melbourne - ph: 03 9654 6242

Come here for: Reasonably priced, fast service Japanese food
Don't come here if: you are looking for consistency - although I normally love this place, today's meal was not good

Meshiya is the default restaurant when I go out with one of my good friends who lives in the city. Whenever we catch up to go shopping around town, we always finish our day at QV for some yummy Japanese food.

We've been here many times before, but this was the first time I actually took pictures for the blog.


The restaurant looks really nice; they managed to do a good job decorating a small space in a shopping mall.

Service is always quick and our meals only took a few minutes to arrive - which is great, because we're starving by the time we sat down.

My friend had the grilled tofu for entree.

Tofu dengaku ($6.80)

She didn't like it much; the tofu's texture was not quite right. Sauce, on the other hand, was nice and made up for the tofu.

I chose the grilled eggplants.

Nasu dengaku ($5.80)

Eggplant was a bit saggy and wayyyy too oily. I actually drained it with a few paper napkins before eating it. Once the oil was removed, it did taste nice. The eggplants were soft and silky inside and went well with the slightly sweet sauce and sesame seeds.

Next came one of our favourites dish here - spicy avocado sashimi.

Spicy avocado sashimi ($6.80)

Again, it just wasn't quite right. Normally they would take a bit chunk of the avocado out and fill it with raw salmon, mayo and spices. Today, the dish was served with too much avocado, not enough salmon and a messy topping of mayo. Although the dish still tasted nice, it didn't look nearly as good as it normally does.

Finally, we shared a small platter of sushi.

Sushi moriawase ($15.80)

Sushi platter was nice, apart from a piece of calamari that just had the weirdest texture. All the other fish tasted good and the rice base was the perfect size (I hate it when sushi is served on a high mountain of rice).

If I were to judge Meshiya based on today's experience, I wouldn't recommend it - the food was just not right. I'm not sure if they changed ownership recently or if they were just having a bad day.

Hope it's the latter - food used to be so good here... Will give it the benefit of doubt this time and come back again one more time soon.