First Look: Onigiri and Soba or Fast Food? Otogo Asks With a Second Shop in the CBD
The speedy Japanese spot’s owner believes people will make healthier choices if the price is right. When onigiri starts at $3.70 and a two-piece combo (with a snack and drink) starts at $10, we think he might be onto something.
by Daniel Cunningham · BroadsheetWhen Mitsuhiro Yashio opened Otogo in Ultimo two years ago, Sydneysiders were only just starting to realise, in earnest, something the Japanese have known forever: as a tasty, affordable and convenient handheld lunch (or breakfast, or dinner), onigiri is pretty much close to perfection.
Fast forward to now, and Otogo is among the growing number of inner-city eateries wrapping up sushi’s triangular sibling in interesting ways. Draped with Wagyu and blowtorched to a perfect char? That’s Mogu Mogu. Speckled with gruyere and stalks of enoki? It’s gotta be Parami. Or how about a saucy number filled with chicken curry? G’day, Tokyo Lamington.
But Otogo is a different proposition to those spots, and its newly minted second branch in the CBD – near Town Hall Station – confirms it. Where others take it slow, Yashio wants to go fast.
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The chef – who trained at Kyoto’s Michelin-recommended Akai – says that if you want to provide a healthy alternative to Big Fast Food, you’ve gotta match the tempo of Big Fast Food. And he’s embraced technology in order to contend.
“If you have the same price, same volume and same speed of service as McDonald’s, I think people will choose the healthy option,” he tells Broadsheet.
At the front of the sunny space are touchscreens to order onigiri and tumblers of buckwheat soba noodles paired with an intensely umami kelp broth like they make in Kansai. If you’ve been to Macca’s lately, the experience is basically the same – except the terminal is actually loaded with receipt paper.
Technology is also at work here in the form of Otogo’s sushi robot, which was trained by AI – after studying 1000 onigiri makers at work – to mimic the pressure of human hands. It can form a perfect triangle of Haenuki rice from Japan’s Yamagata prefecture every six seconds (or up to 500 per hour), before kitchen staff add fillings like miso mushroom, teriyaki duck or prawn tempura.
Like the touchscreen system, Yashio says he uses the machines to maximise efficiency and maintain quality. They were “really huge” when he first inspected them more than a decade ago, but as they’ve become more compact, they’ve grown in popularity outside Japan. “It’s like a Toyota,” he laughs. “It keeps getting smaller.”
But what happens if it breaks down?
“You have to send it back to Japan, that’s the problem with using these new AI food machines. We bought a soft-serve machine and it broke in around eight months,” he says. “But that wasn’t from Japan, that was from Italy.”
Like a Toyota, Otogo’s original onigiri maker in the Ultimo store has some serious endurance. It is yet to break down – “not even once”. When the onigiri starts at $3.70 – and a combo with two onigiri, a snack and drink costs $10 – the CBD robot’s about to be put to the test.
Otogo Town Hall
Ground Floor, 303 Pitt Street, Sydney
Hours:
Mon to Fri 8am–8pm