The strip between Johnston and Gertrude Streets on Smith Street is takeaway heaven. Slowly RM and I are taste-testing our way down the street as our workloads increase and cooking-energy levels decrease.
Peko Peko is billed as a Japanese cafe and it seems to be a popular local haunt. The small, relaxed place is decorated with a few Japanese touches (kimono fabrics, little rock garden in the corner) and it’s staffed by Japanese kitchenhands and quirky art-student waitresses.
The menu is split into small, medium and large dishes, which range from traditional Japanese to fusion flavours. We started off with some agedashi tofu ($10) and soy and ginger marinated soft-shelled crab served with chilli mayonnaise ($10). The texture of the tofu was not the perfect silkiness that you get at Longrain, but still very good dunked in the flavoursome soy-based broth spiked with ginger. The soft-shelled crab was a hit, a contrast in textures with a crunchy outer coating revealing succulent crab meat. With rice we tried the pirikara spicy prawns on a bed of spinach which was relatively unremarkable ($18), chicken gyoza somewhat lacking in flavour and juiciness ($8) and an okonomiyaki ($10) unlike anything I ate in Japan - a bubble-and-squeak-like mash of leftover vegetables cut into triangles, with not a bonito flake in sight.
As you can see, our meal consisted of some hits and misses, but it never veered towards terrible. Peko Peko is not the best Japanese food I’ve had, nor is it the worst. Would I come back again? Yes – and so it gets a HOT.
More takeway in the neighbourhood? Try Mamanee Thai, Crust Pizza or Old Kingdom for Chinese.
- Peko Peko, 199 Smith St, Fitzroy+61 3 9415 9609
Hey there, thank you for leaving me a comment, you really do have the most decisive site about Melbourne! So cool.
LM
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Hi Lady Melbourne
Thanks for your comment. The decisiveness can get me into trouble at times (I’ve been threatened with reader boycott unless I gave somewhere a HOT) but it does make it easy to see at a glance what is good and what is not. No fence sitting here!
Your blog is definitely HOT. I’m so impressed by the pictures of you in your loungeroom with your outfits. Who takes them?
Jetsetting Joyce
I love the fact that you’re Collingwood based now, and seem to be enjoying it too. I was convinced you were a south of the Yarra girl through and through! Btw, how do I read your older posts in chronological order? I can’t seem to find a link to “older posts”.
Hi Huy
South of the Yarra was fun for a while and now North of the Yarra is pretty cool too. I’m not fixated on living North or South, but I’m definitely finding that crossing the river for any social events is a hassle – hence the lack of reviews for Southside suburbs vs Northside suburbs. I’ve been to St Kilda once in 6 months!
I’m currently working on the code to make it easier to get to older posts via the homepage but it’s a lot trickier than I first thought. The workaround at the moment is that if you go to a single post you can click on ‘Next’ and ‘Previous’ posts one by one and keep tracking forwards and backwards in chronological order that way. Hope that helps.
Jetsetting Joyce
The raw tuna don is good at Peko Peko too. Surprisingly fresh, we popped in on a week night too.
I think most of the Japanese takeaway places have both gloriously good and bad options. Have you tried Wood Spoon? Brendan had a slow cooked pork/egg dish which was very good. But everyone else’s dish was really quite ordinary. Healthy tasting but quite bland.
Hi Jenny
Thanks for the tip – the dons looked like good value for an easy one-dish takeaway meal.
I’ve not tried Wood Spoon but have been curious about it. I’ll definitely try the pork/egg dish when I go. Maybe I’ll ask the waiters/waitresses there what they recommend that’s not bland
Jetsetting Joyce
I don’t think I’ve been to an authentic Japanese restaurant yet. There are too many fusion and generic “asian” restaurants around here so it’s hard to find anything real without heading into a big city.
The tofu from Peko Peko sounds really good though.
I agree with Jeanette, whenever you go to a country, one thing you will notice too, that they all have their own rendition of a foreign food… Surprisingly if you go to Singapore, there are Japanese restaurants, tasty yes, very japanese but nothing compared to how Japan effortlessly serve it.
Agree with Jeanette that it’s difficult to find a really authentic Japanese restaurant outside of Japan.
Around here, all the so called Japanese restaurants are sushi restaurants. Can’t find anything authentic Japanese here
PS: The gyozas looks pretty good (even though you say there were a bit disappointing).
Twitter: genvejen
| August 14, 2011, 10:08 am
I agree with Jeanette- it’s difficult to find authentic Japanese cuisine in a lot of places. I always wonder why Asian food is often grouped together and served at the same restaurants- the cuisine differs hugely across the continent so surely this is overly ambitious. It’s almost always to the detriment of each individual cuisine- it’s impossible to perfect the art of four or five and much easier to master one. Peko Peko looks promising however so thanks for pointing it out! I’m impressed by the prices and the food looks terrific- I’ll have to check it out soon.