Brazilian sushi restaurant Oshan is an omakase with a difference in Toorak Road, South Yarra

Toorak Road, South Yarra, can seem predictable. Trams trundle by regularly, silver tracks gleaming in their wake. Car parkers get bitten by clearways every single peak hour. Any time of day or night, 38-year-old bistro France-Soir spills over with Bordeaux-fuelled bonhomie. Further along, by the train station, there’s always someone struggling with the spice at Dainty on Toorak, the recently rebadged Dainty Sichuan.

But not everything feels preordained on this storied, moneyed shopping strip. Halfway down the hill, behind sheer curtains, there’s a surprise: a culinary tale of tropical Brazil told via sushi.

Pretty, peaceful and poised, Oshan is a project by first-time restaurateurs Peterson Maia Machado Correia, a Brazilian chef, and Vanessa Fodera, the woman who inspired him to stay in Australia after he arrived in 2019.

Chef Peterson is from Sao Paulo, a sprawling megalopolis known for having the biggest Japanese community of any city outside Japan. Roughly 2 million Japanese emigrants and their descendants live in Brazil, most of them in Sao Paulo. So it comes as no surprise to learn that Japanese food is a strong strand in the dining scene and that sushi is ubiquitous.

Sushi is steeped in rules and tradition, but it’s also adaptable, changing as it travels. The inside-out California roll hails from Los Angeles in the 1960s. The munchable handrolls in every Australian food court are our own chunky invention and filled with everything from Peking duck to tinned tuna. And in Sao Paulo, sushi often incorporates fruits such as guava and mango, cream cheese is a popular inclusion and there are tempura-fried hot rolls.

Peterson trained under a traditional sushi chef – you know it was old-school because he spent two years washing rice and cutting vegetables before he was allowed to touch a fish. He further developed his style while working in Ibiza, first at a branch of Japanese fusion restaurant Nobu, then at party palace Ushuaia Ibiza Beach Hotel, which has multiple catering outlets.

One day, a Russian oligarch asked him to become the chef on his super-yacht. Peterson spoke little English and unwittingly said yes. “Do you know what you just agreed to?” asked a colleague. “No,” admitted Peterson. He wriggled out of the yacht job and decided he’d better learn English. Australia’s sun and surf beckoned, but somehow he ended up in the shivery bay city of Melbourne.

Oshan is a stand-in for “ocean” and it’s the sea’s blues, greens and kelp-browns that dominate the plush decor at this one-room restaurant. There’s seating for 25, but numbers are restricted to 15, five of them at a comfortable counter, where the chef hands you your dishes directly.

Diners can choose from six- ($155), eight- ($195), and 10-course ($245) menus that generally include Peterson’s signatures.

In Sao Paulo, sushi often incorporates fruits such as guava and mango, cream cheese is a popular inclusion and there are tempura-fried hot rolls.

You might start with sunomono, a lively, vinegar-soused cucumber salad topped with octopus and passionfruit dressing.

Tiradito is a spin on Peruvian marinated fish: here, salmon and tuna are dressed in the chef’s secret sauce, a well-balanced condiment similar to ponzu, a citrus-dashi-soy.

I love the “jyos”, a selection of rice parcels with vegetable wrappers. A shaving of
cucumber encases tuna and caviar; tempura eggplant is wrapped around scallop and dressed with mango-orange sauce; flame-seared cabbage is the wrapper for a vegan bite of shiitake mushrooms and shaved Brazil nut.

Hot rice rolls filled with avocado and topped with a slice of strawberry are a light-hearted bridge to a dessert of matcha panna cotta.

Over the past five years, Melbourne has welcomed about a dozen high-end omakase restaurants, which serve a progression of small courses to diners who put their trust in the chef. The South American angle is interesting, and the experience here is cosseted and calm, but Oshan’s use of local seafood feels limited, with just New Zealand-farmed salmon, locally farmed kingfish and wild bluefin tuna across the menu.

Compare that to Sushi On in Kew, for example, where Korean chef Yong Hyun is making the most of winter’s bounty by using grouper, hapuka, mackerel, sea perch, Australian snapper, ribbon fish and sea urchin.

As with many new Melbourne food operations, this one started as a lockdown hustle, and sushi platters to take home are still key to Oshan’s business. I took a hit for the team and tried one of these as well.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine