MAMASAN

Thirty people for dinner for my thirtieth. Twenty six turned up but that doesn't matter. Thirty for thirty was a good concept.

My hubby and I had tea/coffee at MAMASAN a while ago, stumbling across it one night as we were trolling Bondi for a cafe that served coffee past 9pm. Seriously, what is wrong with keeping coffee machines on past 9pm? And it wasn't even a school night! Lucky these guys did and the owner was nice enough to come out and have a lengthy chat with us after I complimented him on the design of the place and the menu.

Anywho, I loved the set up and concept. I dug that vibe from the first moment I laid eyes on the place.

Izakaya meets dingy Asian diner with funky wait staff and a funny menu. Seriously, read it, its humorous. The owner went into some effort to come up with that shit. His background in design and advertising helps, he knows his shit.

They describe the establishment as Japanese and Taiwanese but its definitely not fusion and you better not dare call it that. Fusion is so like 2002. Asian tapas, yum cha, whatever. Just get it in ya.

For groups of 15 people and more MAMASAN create a set menu, anywhere from $40-60pp, not including drinks. The handy thing is, they create separate drinks tabs which makes "splitting the bill" much easier at the end of the night. They look after big groups really well and space out the serving of the dishes, which means you can relax and enjoy the company and atmosphere. They don't rush to get you out the door, in fact the opposite, which is a nice change for Sydney. Gemma was so helpful with organising the whole night and she took care of everything. This was also a nice change for Sydney! This place is cool, down to earth and unpretentious.

If you're super hungry though, you're best to go as a smaller group so you can order more share plates, which should give you better bang for your buck.

Now, we got pretty rowdy, the cocktails and free pouring of bottles of wine helped, but not with the quality of the photography, so for this, well, suck it up. I'm not going to apologise. Just deal with it, you'll get the idea, even from the blurry ones, which are ultimately "moody". I wasn't there for award winning photography, the mission was to have a boozy dinner and have a party in my mouth where everyone's invited.

Edamame beans steamed and spiced with garlic, pepper and sea salt at $9.50.

 Seared tuna sashimi with red onion. Yeah baby.

One bite beef, their longtime Signature Li Zai dish. Prime long fillet steak, meticulously trimmed of all fat and cooked teppanyaki style in pepper and homemade soy sauce, then sliced into bite sized pieces. (It’s “melt-in-mouth-yum”) at $27.

Mamasan chips, a proud creation from Taiwanese Night Market. Baby potatoes steamed and then light fried with crunchy fresh basil and served with wasabi mayo at $9.

Sesame prawn rolls, 4 pieces of gluten free crunchy deliciousness served with sweet chilli sauce at $13.

Steamed mixed prawn and vege dumplings, a delicious cornucopia of snow pea and prawn, spinach and prawn, and chive and prawn dumplings (6 large gluten-free dumplings) at $16.

We also had duck pancakes, chilli chicken and vegetable gyozas, but dug into those puppies and polished them off before I could pick up my camera.

Lots of gluten free and vegetarian options available.

The leaning tower of Bondi grew the more dumplings we ate.

Followed by dessert, which was Gooey, the house specialty, like a chocolate brownie but much softer and minus the nuts.

Also had black sticky rice pudding. Both desserts were do delicious, we needed one each (as opposed to sharing them).

The food was finger licking good. A fact which I cross checked on the night with my somewhat sober husband. Oh and another great thing about MAMASAN, they're into plate licking too! Look at that dancer, so pleased with herself, so she should be, we had a great night.

MAMASAN
57/59 Beach Road
Bondi Beach
NSW 2026
T: 02 9130 5066
www.mamasan.com.au