Yaegiku Japanese Cuisine     八重菊日本料理   (Closed)

This was the first meal of my CNY. Entering the arcade, we noticed there were still many tourists, particularly Mainlanders. However, the ambiance wasn't as crowded as expected. Therefore, I thought it might be nice to dine in iSquare. Thinking whether we should had casual dining or the better quality ones, we looked at the directory, trying to make up our mind a.s.a.p. Alright, we took the escalator to 28F at first, as I believed it would be a nice restaurant. However, there seemed to be a better choice, thus we had a look at the 29F one. Walking out from the lift, our ears were nearly damaged owing to the loud dragon dance. We looked at the menus of Yaegiku and had our final decision.

Inside the Japanese restaurant, there was a 180 degree panoramic view, featuring the entre Victoria Harbour. Surprisingly, on my left side, there was also a room for teppanyaki, which I didn't notice at first. Unlike other restaurants of Sky Garden, the atmosphere here was so comfortable and pleasant, while the service was neither good nor bad. Having a look at the set lunch menu, I still found it hard to make a decision 'cause I really had a desire to try all of them. But I chose tempura, sashimi rice with udon set ($140) and my mate decided to have a fried udon with rice which was $20 cheaper than mine. In my set, it came with a green salad, udon, green tea and desert (cheesecake). As for my mate, it looked generally the same as mine, except that hers had a miso soup.

Overall, I would definitely suggest food lovers to have a try at this restaurant. Beautiful view, nice service, large food portion and good sanitation were the reasons why I graded it at a high score. I wished that I can come at Sky Garden and try other delicacies before my leave weeks later.

Heard from a friend that this restaurant has very nice sea view and good Teppanyaki food, so went there to try try~

Reservation was surprisingly easy, and this could be explained by the actual experience...

We ordered:
Teppanyaki - lobster ($350), US prime beef ($320), foie gras ($240), uni fried rice
And also - uni sashimi ($220), sashimi combo ($480), tomato salad

Also saw from the menu, Teppanyaki sets were ranging from $850 - $1700 per person.

My friend was right, Teppanyaki was good but others were not impressive.

Given the $$$ we were paying, the service was poor and not high-end at all. Our server kept on selling us things, as far as I can recall, she tried to hard sell us at least 6 items. At the end we only took the uni sashimi, but having to reject her time after time was very annoying. I've never experienced such selling effort at a high-end Jap restaurant elsewhere.

During the course of the dinner, no one came to re-fill our tea (maybe because we did not buy her hard-selling). Food arrived not hot enough. But I do appreciate that the cold plates arrived before the hot plates which made much sense.

When we left the restaurant, waiters just walked pass us and no one said thank you or good-bye... even Genki sushi does better than that la!?

I would recommend this restaurant if you have tourist friends, they can watch the 8pm firework show there. But I will not come back myself. With the same $$$ I'd rather choose Inagiku/ Unkai/ WaSanMai etc...

Superb view
Great value for money

My father has always been a connoisseur for fine dining given his years in marketing, so I always have to think hard for places to celebrate with him for F day or his Bday. Luckily, this year's choice - Yaegiku - turned out to be a great one for my "Foo Chan Dai Yan".
Teppanyaki was prepared by a skillful chef with dedication and attention to details to satisfy our senses:
- Food was beautifully arranged, garnished tastefully;
- Non-traditional / slightly western spice was used to bring out the intricacies of the seafood and other various ingredients;
- Service was superb - the waitresses would even renew your napkin for you if yours just slipped onto the ground!

In all, we were all very satisfied with the whole experience - not to mention a 15% off for using HSXC creditcard for bill at the end. HKD400 pax for a seafood+angus beef lunch with great seaview is definitely worth it. (Noted that their non-teppanyaki menu was also great value at ~HKD100-120 )

Dined at a place called "YAEGIKU" at 29/F., i Square, 63 Nathan Road, TST.
5 stars hotel prices but HK local low end cafe services. Paid over HKD 18,000 for 16 people. Food was NOT good and no single waiter could take the right order. Food was served very slowly and wrong food went to wrong people. They served one of our friends the dessert before her fried rice. The waiter won't even apologized for this kind of huge mistake!! CAN'T BELIEVE IT!!!!!

When we asked if we could change our set dessert, a cheese cake, to ice-cream. The manager said "yes" of course. After we checked our bill at the end, he charged us HK$135 per a scoop of regular ice-cream for 14 scoops. Actually we could call Police to report this kind of cheating.

At the end, the shop manager finally showed up and do you know what she offered to compensate this kind of unbelievable services and practice?? An VIP card for us so that we could have discount next time. We told her to her face that "We will never come back and will let as many people to know how bad this restaurant is as possible"!!

My wife and I like to try out all of the Japanese sushi and eating places in TST for lunch before having dinner there formally, so we chose this place on a random Saturday for its location and spectacular views over Hong Kong harbour.

The lunch menu prices, as you might expect, was right up there with Kenjo's or Sushi Hiro, but given how cheap a Japanese set lunch is in HK, that was not a problem. Of course, the view was a good as advertised.

However, the main problem is that the sushi and sashimi sets are very run of the mill, meaning that they provide the usual salmon, maguro and ebi. Sexy stuff like uni, scallops, toro, saba were conspicuously missing.

I asked the waiter staff and found out that the chef was not Japanese, which explained the poor sourcing of seafood. So you're not really getting an authentic experience. To close, everything looks the part, but it's just a little off. Many better places in TST - I suggest you try any sushi place in Toy House for a truly authentic experience at half the price.

For the lack of authenticity given a posh address like I-Square, this restaurant receives a failing grade. Not a repeat dining venue for us.