Aoki Japanese Kitchen - Kurunjang

We recently found another local Japanese restaurant! Located in Glen Waverley, Aoki is yet another addition to the already overflowing restaurants around that area. As we do love our Japanese cuisine, we were excited to see what Aoki could offer. Upon entering we noticed how modern and spacious the restaurant was. The tables, benches and floors all had a similar stone tile theme with the glow of purple lights throughout. In fact it reminded us of some of the Japanese restaurants we recently visited in the U.S. It had a real upmarket and modern feel. We were greeted by friendly staff who seated us straight away and provided us with some menus. There were so many dishes that we wanted to order!

Nice new discovery from glen! Absolutely encore for this restaurant! All dishes are so delicious and delicate! Hope they keep on their quality and I will keep on coming back ;

What a spectacular meal. Aoki is wonderful. We made an arrangement through connections to have a special paid! meal here. The chef is highly skilled in Japanese and French cooking and clearly very adept at both styles. Our opening bento dish had a vast range of beautifully presented and superbly composed dishes. There was so much that was great and memorable here that it’s almost hard to list. There was eel, prawn, quail, chicken, beef, scallops and tuna among others. Each dish was incredibly delicate and wonderfully flavoursome and attractive. We had these dishes with three different types of sake, and each sake tasted superb. The next course was a sushi and sashimi platter of major proportions. An astonishing range of superbly arranged pieces that were wonderful. The next dish of crumbed pork was arranged in a western style and was again impressively presented and cooked. We think another savoury course was planned but we waved the white flag at that point. A beautiful dessert then arrived. A very delicate cream cake again displayed with a very deft modern touch. All told, it was an absolutely magnificent meal, very special and a real treat. I strongly recommend trying this restaurant. It is very easy to get to by car or train few hundred meters from Glen Waverley station . It’s a quality place in an unexpected location. The staff are beautiful here. We were fussed over delicately from the moment we arrived to the time we left. My favourite was the server who would ever so delicately rearrange things on the table when she’d visit. Highly recommended.

The interior is spacious, with booth seating which is always a plus in my book. The staff are attentive and service was timely. We stopped in for Sunday lunch, ordered a selection of sushi sashimi. Overall the food was enjoyable with the Kingfish aburi the favourites.

We decided to try out Aoki for dinner on a weekday. Contrary to other restaurants nearby it was not busy. The interior and lighting was quite nice and comfortable. Service was alright. The waitresses were quite friendly and explained their specials quite well. One complaint I have however is that the food took a very long time to arrive, around 40 minutes. Other customers that came after us received their food earlier. In terms of the food itself, presentation was excellent. We had the beef steak, nabeyaki udon, Japanese fried chicken and takoyaki. They were generally pretty good but unfortunately nothing really stood out, especially after waiting so long for the food and paying a premium price. However I found the steak and the takoyaki to be better than the others. The takoyaki was an interesting take on Italian meatball style, and was really nice. The trouble was they were super soggy and difficult to even pick one up whole. The steak was very tender so I'm quite happy about it. The sauce were quite sweet due to the honey so just be aware of this.Overall I'm not in a hurry to return, especially when there are many other restaurants around the area.