Sensory Underground: An Immersive Dining Experience Featuring Tokyo Tina

Tonight Mary and I got to attend Sensory Underground, which was billed as an immersive dining experience featuring the food of the restaurant Tokyo Tina. We entered the dining space under Fed Square through a door on Platform 13 of Flinders Street Station. On arrival we were given a little cocktail in a glass jar before being shown to our seats on one of the long communal dining tables.

As this was a multisensory dining experience set in the future, we were treated to different performances during the evening, including lighting installations by Kit Webster, an electronic soundtrack by Rival Consoles, and a robots den curated by Paul Findlay as we left the building.

The dinner by Tokyo Tina was four courses and themed around environmental sustainability. The entree was about finding new sources of food and included a bag with some very tasty crickets.

The first course of tinned fish and sashimi was themed around not wasting anything. It had a tin can that contained diced salmon belly, crispy fish skin, and salmon roe on a bed of salmon liver mousse with kombu crackers. There was also kingfish and salmon sashimi with yuzukosho dressing. All of it was yummy.

The main course was themed around being plant-based and wasting nothing through having it served on a sesame cracker plate. The two dishes were miso roasted cauliflower, walnut and tofu cream, and crispy Jerusalem artichoke, and a pork terrine under a blanket of pickled persimmon.

The final course was dessert, which was themed around future food. It had a 3D printed piece of chocolate along with a yuzu curd doughnut, which was very light and fluffy.

Overall it was a fun experience over the 90 minutes of the dinner, although it felt a bit rushed as we were the first seating for the evening. I'm not sure if the whole immersive experience was as fully realised as it could have been, especially considering the $129 cost (which didn't include drinks).