Yoku Ono

6A Anchor Place
Prahran, VIC 3181
https://www.yokuono.com.au/

This is an entirely unfair and biased review. I’d gotten back from Japan maybe 3 weeks prior, and was hankering for a bowl of ramen. I knew perfectly well that the selling point of Yoku Ono was not authenticity; rather, it’s meant to be a cool place to hang out with your mates, and to share a few Japanese-ish dishes whilst you toss back the sake. So with all that said, I didn’t love Yoku Ono. It felt like it was focussing too hard on being cool, and not hard enough on actually keeping the food up to the continuously rising standards in Melbourne. It’s also insanely pricey. We’re talking almost $30 for a very standard bowl of no-frills ramen. But I don’t want to put anyone off Yoku Ono too much – it’s a pretty funky place to go with friends, the actual flavours are objectively reasonable, and it has the added bonus of being very dietary-friendly. Just maybe don’t go 3 weeks after a food tour of Japan.

Rating: 11/20 – objectively reasonable. but very expensive.
What to order: mmmm I’m not in love with the food, but the cocktails look yummy, and they have a really nice selection of Japanese alcohols.

The Yoku Ono Ramen ($26) is their version of the classic tonkotsu, and the result was… unmemorable. Nothing about it was good or bad enough to warrant mention, and whilst I finished the bowl happily enough, I could barely remember anything about it the next day.

The Tan Tan Sesame Ramen ($26) fared slightly better, largely due to the addition of chili and pickled veggies. The spicy mince itself was much too sweet, but when mixed through with the noodles, added an enjoyable warmth.

I have no idea what is going on here. This Pork Gyoza ($12, 5pcs) would’ve been fine on its own, even if it was under-fried and the skin was splitting at the bottom. But they went and topped it off with a weirdly salty peanut sauce, and a handful of raw cabbage. Whatever they’re trying to achieve, I don’t follow.

The Tofu Meatballs ($12) was the most interesting, and best value dish of the lot. On the plus side, the sauce was quite flavoursome and soaked well into the giant tofu balls, and I appreciated the usually underutilised addition of okra. On the downside however, the sauce was weirdly gluey, the whole thing tasted greasy, and to be frank, the recipe I have for sweet and sour tofu meatballs is way better (link here – I can’t seem to embed it in the text: https://fullofplants.com/tofu-balls-with-sweet-spicy-sauce/).

My favourite part of the meal would have to be the Black Sugar Plum Wine ($13), which was crisp and refreshing, but also had a warm, toffee sweetness.