Jitzu review from a free trip to Dunedin

Wow what a weekend good to be reliving the memories of Dunedin! And it was free trip! One particular thing I love about Dunedin is going to BYOs. There is nothing like polishing off a bottle of $6.99 Shiraz over an Asian meal and using it to justify your lonely walk home in the morning. The venue tonight was the popular Jitzu BYO restaurant. I was looking forward to the new experience and seeing my friends.

When I first arrived I was dumbstruck. They had cut the legs off our table so that it was about 30cm off the ground and eliminated the chairs. I couldn’t see the reasoning behind it. It was like being a kid at Christmas not being allowed to sit at the table with the adults so you go sit on the floor and eat. Due to the number of people transferring from one side of the table to the other had to be done army style underneath the table with people reemerging on the other side like they had just escaped from being stuck in a Chilian mine. Standing up made you feel like you had a large amount of authority, kinda like a motorcyclist in a scooter gang.
So anyway onto the food side of things. I ordered a bento chicken box with a miso starter. This was my first time trying miso and honestly I am not a fan. It tasted like juice drained from a sardines can mixed what felt like whale blubber. But hey this is a Japanese experience and a fishy dish is vital for that. The Miso was not for me which is crazy because I go crazy over sardines on toast which used to rat out my previous fussy flatmates. The others had the complete opposite opinion and rated it.

The bento box however was a taste sensation and also an awesome idea. Each ingredient is separated into its own compartment so it’s up to you to mix and match. The main body of the box was the chicken nugget with mayonnaise and a restaurant special tomato sauce, the rest of the box consisted of rice some onion things, a random sushi roll and some other sauces. Sorry the details are quite hazy as my fine red was nearly finished. I tried every compartment individually in order to gauge how I was best going to mix everything into a mouthful that was worthy of a samurai honor. The flavors of each individual compartment were amazing; it was like a journey through Japanese food culture. On my first mixing attempt I failed dismally mainly because my chopstick dexterity was the equivalent of someone with Parkinson’s. I probably should have performed seppuku right then and there. I slowly got the hang of it and made some pretty worthy mixes but would have been better with proper cutlery. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal and the whole chopsticks debacle meant I actually took time to appreciate it rather than adding more food to my mouth in-between chewing.

Overall this is a great BYO to go to in Dunedin. You can’t get as rowdy as in chopsticks and there appears to be no basement where you can go exploring but the food is ten times nicer and comes in cool mix and match boxes. The sitting room out back has the potential for many fun challenges e.g how many people can fit under the table? because you can definitely get two layers of people lying under there. There is however no potential for a sneaky under the table gobby or handy.

Rating

Setting-4/5 could had some more Japanese stuff like samurai swords
Taste-4/6 the miso caused this to be lower others might have a different opinion
Presentation-4/5
Service-4.5/5
Total-16.5/21

To all those in Dunedin I love each and every one of you

Cheers
Larry