Chotto Motto

On Wellington Street in Collingwood, a small, loud room organised around one very specific pleasure: Hamamatsu-style gyoza arranged in a ring, pan-fried, flipped and fried again until the base fuses into a single crisp spiral, then delivered, cheese optional, in a pizza box. You order them by the ten or twenty. Around that centrepiece is a tight menu of katsu sandwiches and juicy karaage, chicken or cauliflower, and beer pulled from a refurbished Japanese vending machine stocked with local independents and craft imports. The look is unapologetic Showa-era clutter: junk-shop curios, old Sega games and pop records, murals sprawling across walls inside and out, courtesy of local artists. It is the work of a Collingwood operator with a couple of other neighbourhood rooms to his name, and the same knowing, playful sensibility runs through all of it. The house crispy chilli oil has taken on a life of its own, sold by the jar through an in-house pantry alongside other Japanese staples. Dumplings are made by hand daily, and the whole enterprise treats a humble format with real seriousness while refusing to take itself seriously at all, a hard balance, held well.