Wood Spoon Kitchen

Well, peeps, I am heading back to uni this year to become a Master of Teachering. I'm very excited about this - particularly as I now have a student card! - and Essie wanted for us to go out to celebrate my success and we ended up at Wood Spoon. It was a bit of a surprise as I had been mentioning wanting to go there but wasn't expecting a sms from her the day I found out about uni telling me we had a booking - she's sneaky!

Anyway, together with the boys we headed off to try this place I have heard so much about.

We shared a bunch of nibbley things to start - edamame, seaweed salad, agedashi tofu and okonoimyaki - and I chose to have umeshu while everyone else had various sake. The umeshu was one of the nicest plum wines I've had (which, admittedly, isn't hard as I've only had one other plum wine in my life) and the pear sake I sampled was amazing.



The edamame was salty and delicious and we were so frickin' hungry that they were gone in a flash.



I loved the seaweed salad - I loved the tomato and cucumber in it.



It was a tasty okonomiyaki - it has 'nom' in the name so it must be good - and I can't remember any thing else about it but it being tasty. This is the downside of writing up two weeks late!



I REMEMBER THINGS ABOUT THIS. This agedashi tofu was by far the highlight of the meal and was so fucking amazing. OMG PEEPS. Nix and I were sharing this as the omnis had the pork gyoza but we convinced Dan and Esther to try some too and then regretted our decision as it meant less tofu for us. If you eat one thing this year, make it this!



The vego miso was tasty if not quite what I expected. If I'd read the menu, I would have noticed the mention of pumpkin and sweet potato. It wasn't what I was expecting but it is tasty and full of surprise sustenance!



We shared the Dengaku Don which I loved but J found the texture a bit strange - it was a bit like tahini-coated eggplant. Which makes it sound terrible but I loved the softness of the eggplant and the sesame flavour. I can see that it might not be to everyone's cup of tea.



After our monster effort, we thought it best to go the whole way by having dessert. The sesame icecream was an intense trip to sesame land - no sugary fluff here. It went really well with our other dessert choice . . .




pumpkin dango! This was very very sweet but also fairly amazing. Anyone who has had the pleasure of going to The Dumpling House with us knows our love of the pumpkin cakes. This dish was like the insides of pumpkin cake in sweet soup. WINNER.

At this point we rolled ourselves out to my car (A+ parking spot in front of the restaurant) and went home to rub our bellies.

This was an amazing evening - the food, company and occasion - and I feel like I've already had my best meal of 2010 in the first half of January. We had excellent service all night and even though it is a small space (though, apparently, it used to be smaller), it didn't feel like we were eating on top of the other patrons. Wood Spoon also get a huge thumbs up for their clearly marked vego, vegan and gluten-free options on their menu. It makes everything less stressful when you know exactly what everyone can eat.

GO THERE AND HAVE THE TOFU! IT IS AMAZING.

Wood Spoon Kitchen
88 Smith Street
Collingwood
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