Ren Japanese Restaurant, Runcorn, QLD

Japanese cuisine has always been one of my favourite choices when dining out. The flavours  are usually simple, and if you come across a restaurant that uses the freshest produce available, the true flavours of each ingredient just comes through in every bite.

On this occasion, we visited Ren Japanese Restaurant, located in the Runcorn Shopping Plaza on Warrigal Road. The restaurant only recently opened, so when I saw the low number of reviews and ratings on Urbanspoon, I was curious and decided to try it out so I could share my experience with my readers.

We arrived at 7pm and there were only two other tables that were filled, which worked in our favour as we hadn’t made a booking. The decor inside the restaurant were rather simple, giving off a fast food outlet feel, however it didn’t bother us, as we anticipated that the food made up for it. There was a good range of variety on the menu and the prices were quite reasonable. There were five of us, giving us a good opportunity to sample a variety of dishes from the menu.

We started with the sashimi-o-mori ($45), which contained salmon, tuna, kingfish, scallops, sweet prawns and a scampi. The menu noted the dish would feed 5 people, however we felt it was a bit misleading as there some of the seafood (scampi and prawns) only had one or two pieces to share. The sashimi was not too bad but not the freshest I've eaten and didn't have the fresh fish taste like I had tried at the Sydney Fish Markets.

We also ordered the tonkotsu ($16.50), which was thinly crumbed but was on the dry side and wasn't bursting with the natural pork juice that I was hoping for. As for the wagyu steak ($26.50), it was over cooked and quite tough, which my guests were disappointed about as they were really looking forward to having wagyu that night! The assorted tempura ($18.50) dish had all your regular items such as prawns, pumpkin, some small pieces of fish and zucchini, while the spider roll ($13.00) was also fairly standard and nothing really to rave about.

Sashimi-o-mori ($45)

Wagyu Steak ($26.50)

Tonkotsu ($16.50)

Assorted Tempura ($18.50)

Spider Roll ($13.00)

Ren Japanese Restaurant has made a good effort of producing quality food in order to win over diners from other nearby competition such as Sakura, KU-O and Oishii Sushi Bar.  Competition is particularly fierce on the South side and I hope the restaurant really takes diners' opinions into consideration in order to continuously improve and out last the rest of its competitors.