Sono JapaneseRestaurant

On the upper level of Portside Wharf, with the Brisbane River sliding past its windows, this long-running room has spent nearly two decades making the case for polished Japanese dining in Hamilton. The space is designed to slow you down, box lights, water features, river stones and bamboo setting a calm, neutral backdrop, and it splits its attention between a flaming teppanyaki grill, a sushi bar, and traditional paper-screened rooms with tatami tables for groups. Couples, meanwhile, angle for the river-view tables. The cooking reaches for provenance and precision: A5 wagyu seared at the teppanyaki counter, sashimi and sushi platters cut from the day's catch, and quieter classics like black cod in sweet Saikyo miso or a silky crab chawanmushi. It is a restaurant built as much for occasion as for appetite, birthdays, anniversaries and the kind of dinner that warrants the drive to the wharf, and it has collected a shelf of accolades along the way. Portions can run refined rather than generous at the premium end, but the ambition is clear: a considered, riverside approximation of Japan in a city not overflowing with rooms of this polish.