Cho ChoSan

A design-forward izakaya on the Potts Point strip, drawn from the easy spirit of Tokyo's neighbourhood bars and translated into a bright, pared-back room. The menu is built for grazing and sharing across a long evening: sashimi and a raw bar at one end, karaage and wagyu sirloin at the other, with the kitchen's own signatures in between. Regulars come for the sweet-and-crunchy miso eggplant sticks, spicy sesame noodles tossed with furikake and cucumber, and steamed bao you fill yourself with soy chicken katsu and pickled ginger. Sweets are taken as seriously as the savoury, a matcha soft serve that has become something of a fixture, black sesame mochi to finish. The drinks list runs deep through sake, wine and cocktails, and set menus offer a way to hand the ordering over to the kitchen. The whole thing is pitched somewhere between a proper dinner and a good-time bar, polished enough to feel considered but loose enough that no one is precious about it. It has held its place among the area's dependable Japanese rooms for years, less through reinvention than through getting the details consistently right.