On Thursday 10th, my Husband and I celebrated our tenth anniversary together. We’ve been married for three of those years.

It’s become a tradition since we were married to spend the night in a fancy pants Melbourne hotel, and have dinner at Shoya – a posh Japanese restaurant in China Town.

Lately, the reviews for Shoya have been rather lacklustre, but we decided to go anyway.

We booked for Yakkiniku, as last year we had the Chef’s special ten course degustation menu and the decadence of that particular evening hasn’t yet receded from our memories.

The yakiniku menu is really nice, and we prefer the cheaper $49 set simply because neither of us likes abalone.

This time, we also asked for a table with chairs, instead of the secluded booth that left my back achy and sore for two days we had on our first trip. We were seated at a lovely table, with the extra benefit of being near the wine service table.

The food was incredible – we started with the scampi springroll, which we devoured so fast that I wished there was more of. Then the waitress came with the first round of many, many plates of wagyu beef, ox tongue, wagyu sausage, vegetables, pork and chicken for grilling on the built in yakiniku smokeless grill.

Service was attentive and friendly, without being intrusive. Our wine glasses were refilled promptly, as was our ice water. The sake was served nice and chilled and the black sesame icecream I decided on for desert was the best I’ve had in a long time.

If you’ve been wondering about going to Shoya for an authentic Japanese meal but the reviews on eatibility and others have put you off – ignore them. After all this time, they are still up there with the best, and the food is still incredible.