Build your own bowl of Japan’s favourite soul food at this bunker, but don’t miss this item

Ditch the Rorschach test. Ask someone what their favourite comfort food is and you’ll get much closer to understanding them than any inkblot description can. Mad about hot pot? Extrovert who thrives in the company of others. Love tiny tortellini in a pool of northern Italian brodo? Fantastic taste and willpower, probably an architect. Live for kimchi jiggae, Korea’s invigorating stew? You understand the dance of pleasure and pain.

And what about oden? The Japanese soup-meets-stew of dashi broth and slow-cooked vegetables, fish and other delights? Probably not a tick-box on the questionnaire for most Australians. Yet.

Tourism to Japan has nearly doubled since 2019. Japanese restaurants focused on one style of dish are opening all over Melbourne. And now there’s one devoted to oden, right down to its name.

Melanie Zhang opened Oden on Bourke Street with the bold gambit of serving this mostly unknown Japanese dish and little else. Zhang helped usher in Melbourne’s current bounty of Japanese fine-dining, opening two-hatted Ishizuka in 2018 with a highly seasonal set menu. Last September, she took up the task of introducing us to something more humble.

Oden is a soul food dish that goes back centuries, a sort of hot-pot-for-one, a balm during cold winters. You build your own bowl from a roster of ingredients called tane. Boiled eggs, discs of buttery daikon, slabs of tofu, fish cakes of all kinds – they’re all simmered in the broth you slurp. Flavour squared.

At Oden, chef Saki Yamamoto (who’s come from Society and Gordon Ramsay restaurants in Tokyo) builds a rich duck bone broth for winter, deepened by dried bonito, red miso and kelp. Choose three tane. Maybe pork belly, great dabbed in hot Japanese mustard on the side. Mochi kinchaku, a small sack of fried tofu, makes an excellent broth-soaker. One belongs in every bowl.

Veering from tradition, several abstract odens are composed by the kitchen. In one bowl, chicken and cabbage rolls bob beside a slow-cooked tomato filled with basil paste.

For another, prawn meat is shaped into a ball delicate as a cloud, floating in a dashi-based fish broth. Unfortunately, mine was lukewarm when it arrived but I could see its nourishing potential.

Spoiler alert: Oden is no longer just about oden. Earlier this year, Zhang and her team broadened the menu, adding raw dishes, fried snacks and larger share plates with sides and dessert for good measure. Specialist ramen bars, soba noodle shops and tempura restaurants are what’s great about eating in big Japanese cities. But in Melbourne, with a smaller population who aren’t so familiar with this particular dish? I’m guessing the turnover wasn’t there.

‘Mochi kinchaku, a small sack of fried tofu, makes an excellent broth-soaker. One belongs in every bowl.’

Still, the spirit of oden lives on in other ways. The room is mostly kitchen yet feels cosy. Steam rises into the air from oden pots bubbling on the counter. A dozen or so bar stools face the action – we’re all gathered around the metaphorical hearth. If you’re not, though, you’ll be at a table ensconced among smoky glass, timber shelving and sake bottles. The place feels like a cabin for people wearing Balenciaga and charging their phone at the table with a powerbank.

The menu’s broader appeal can act as a gateway to oden for the uninitiated. Drinking food is plentiful: oysters zhuzhed with ginger jelly; tsukune, the chicken meatball skewers that are a yakitori staple. Beef tataki presents as buttery wagyu rump offset by wasabi mayo and crescents of pickled celery. Tataki is often drowned in too-sweet dressing; Oden’s version is from another family of the raw beef kingdom altogether.

A full-blown meal might lead you to wagyu porterhouse. Or roasted duck breast – cooked quite rare – sliced and fanned out, splashed with sticky sauce bigarade powered by orange and yuzu, with more yuzu in a foam that spectacularly lifts the classic French sauce and rich meat.

People sip cocktails – booze-free and otherwise – in tall glasses filled with nice ice from a list written by Nick Tesar, who’s mixed drinks everywhere from Bar Liberty to Gin Palace. Nearly 20 sakes have been chosen by sommelier Ashley Boburka, an employee of Etta who consults here. Priced from $12 to $105 per 90-millilitre pour, each comes with easy-to-decipher tasting notes that relate to Oden’s menu. Uehara brewery’s Soma No Tengo is an ultra food-friendly choice: loads of acidity on the finish, a little texture and spice.

Service appeared stretched on both my visits: it was difficult to order another drink or have our plates cleared, and other tables also seemed to be flagging down waiters to get what they needed. But the recent hire of experienced restaurant manager Simon Denton (founder of Izakaya Den) should help.

Pivoting to a vastly different concept in a restaurant’s early days is brave and teething issues are inevitable. But Zhang has good people around her to steer Oden. And it already stands apart as a new style of Japanese dining, a place to embrace your own wintry rituals while basking in the sounds and sights and smells that could create a new one.

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.