The heavy rain this morning made me not want to leave the house. I would have been happy just sleeping all day on my “uni day” had it not for the fact that my mum is currently pissing me off as of late. Because I did not want to be stuck in the same house with her, I decided to brave the rain and head into East Melbourne to meet up with Adam just as he was finishing work for the day. Thankfully, the rain stopped just as the bus exited the freeway and by the time we walked across Victoria Pde and into Smith Street, it was warm and sunny. Ahhh, that’s Melbourne for you.

We walked into a Japanese cafe called Wabi Sabi Salon which looks nothing like your average Japanese eatery, but did not look exactly out of place in Collingwood. To quote last year’s Cheap Eats Guide, the restaurant is “Collingwood meets Osaka” and indeed the eccentric and colourful trinkets from Japan combined with patrons that could only be adequately described by Christian Lander. Taking its name from the traditional Japanese concept of wabi sabi as described by Leonard Koren, the restaurant epitomises all things that are “imperfect, impermanent, unconventional and incomplete.” Here, your chopsticks rest on mismatched chopsticks holders and standard cafe tables stand amongst communal tables and traditional Japanese tatami mats. The food also reflects this, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

So, Wabi Sabi offers a selection of a la carte items during lunch and dinner, but bento boxes and sushi rolls are also offered during lunch while dinner patrons have the privilege of also being offered some “dinner only” items. There are three types of bento boxes to choose from, a fish one ($13), a meat one ($12) and a vegie one ($11). Every day, the contents of the bento box change according to what the chef happens to cook on the day. For example, today’s meat bento consisted of chicken karaage and the fish was whiting katsu which Adam and I ordered respectively.