Nine Fine Foods

Many, many years ago when I was much younger and the prospect of ever travelling to Japan was so distant it couldn’t be seen with a high powered telescope, Steve and I used to frequent a little restaurant in Leederville called Banzai. It was small and cute with a huge mural of Astroboy painted on the wall and a grape coloured iMac (they were so hot back then) and we imagined it was like something you would find in downtown Tokyo. And the food was pretty great too. We were regulars there, it was our go to for every occasion. We took our friends there and visitors from interstate. In fact we went there so often that the staff knew us. Many a good night was had there with friends and a few bottles of wine. Ahhh…good times.

Then, suddenly the head chef left to persue other interests. For a while, the quality stayed similar, but eventually it changed and it just wasn’t the same. The place got renovated and the menu changed, Astroboy got painted over, and slowly we stopped going there.

One day I was reading the paper (remember those days?) and I saw an article about Banzai’s head chef Muneki Song, opening up a new restaurant called Nine. Woo hoo! We thought, and at the earliest opportunity we headed to Nine. It was a bit fancier than Banzai ever was but the food was fantastic, and it quickly became our new place to take friends and family. Then at one point, and I’m not really sure when this happened, it suddenly didn’t seem as good any more and the prices skyrocketed. Maybe this was around the same time we started travelling to Japan which changed our expectations, but I’m not sure. Whatever is was, we stopped going there.

Fast forward to about 10 years later. And Nine Fine Foods has been open and in the same location for all this time. Occasionally I would walk past it and check out its menu, or look it up on the internet. I started to wonder why we ever stopped going there, and decided it was time to give it another chance. And so it was, on my 42nd birthday, on a Tuesday night we ventured back. I was a bit worried we would be the only ones in there on a Tuesday night, but it was actually comfortably busy. Now, Nine is by no means a cheap restaurant, but compared to everywhere else in Perth, it’s actually quite reasonably priced. We opted for the Osusume course menu, and went about choosing our dishes. Nine was the first place I ever tried Soft Shell Crab, so I couldn’t resist ordering one with my spaghetti and caviar starter. For entree I had the aforementioned spaghetti as well as the deep sea perch & scallop. The spaghetti used to be one of my favourite dishes at Nine – I must say, it did not disappoint. In fact, I wished I had’ve ordered it for my main. The perch and scallop was delicious too.

Steve got the Osumashi Beef cheek and the Venison & Chorizo for his starters. The beef, according to Steve was one the best things he has ever eaten. I tried a little of it, and I must agree, it was amazing.

For mains Steve got the Caviar pasta (jealous) and I got the Duck Confit, which, was really, really good too.

For dessert, we both got the Matcha fondant pancake. I was quite full by this stage, but it was delicious.

Everything was excellent. Super delicious and right up there with one of the best meals I’ve ever had! My only complaint was that it was perhaps a tad dark in there (I like being able to see my food properly) – and it also made it tough for me to take any good photos 😊 These photos here really don’t do the food justice.