Habitat Japanese Restaurant     柊亭料理   (Renamed)

The restaurant is now known as 楠料理

The restaurant itself looked pretty decent and authentic, but the emptiness of the restaurant shocked us. It was around 7pm when we arrived and there were only a table of 2 among the empty seats...perhaps that was why they needed to have groupon promotion. Nevertheless, we did not quite like the setting: the hygiene was below average as we spotted some trash and dirt around us; also with the extremly cold air conditioning that had us freezing the whole evening. It was not pleasant at all as any customer walking into the restaurant would expect the restaurant to live up to its 'presented' standard.

Due to the unfavourable lighting of the restaurant, C was not able to capture all the photos of the dishes. Therefore I shall pay special attention to the dishes without the photos, in order to effectively comment on them in words.

The first dish was the Cold Tomato Salad (凍番茄沙拉) - it was quite a refreshing start. The tomatoes were fresh and sweet along with the Japanese Salad dressing. A good appetiser to get my digestion going! The next came the 葱toro手卷 & 原板馬糞膽刺身 . The 葱toro手卷 were acceptable, the spring onions and toro were alright though nothing too surprising was spotted. Yet whenever I have 手卷 I am very aware of the quality of the seaweed as it represents whether the 手卷 is freshly made or not. Clearly, to me, this 葱toro手卷 failed in being freshly wrapped as the seaweed has gone hard and not crispy at all. As for the 原板馬糞膽刺身, I dare to say it was the worse dish of the night! When I bought the groupon, the photo of this dish shown on the site was relatively big in size and nice, but the reality of the dish was nothing comparable to that. Fine, I might have deceived by the photos. But the worst came when we actually tasted it, it was absolutely disappointing! The 馬糞膽刺身 was soggy and plain. It instantly melted into a pile of nothingness in your mouth! We had no idea what we were eating and we weren't even able to pick them up from the plate as it gone soggy even by picking them up!

One of the side dishes was 日本毛豆. We didn't like it as well. It was too salty - we could actually spot the large amount of salt they sprinkled on top of the beans...

The 黑蟹子燒餅 was average.. the flavour was just right but the texture was not impressive. The excessive use of flavour has thickened the base of the pizza, and having it overcooked have made the texture gone very sticky and hard. Comparing to the previous dishes, a slightly better one must be the 免治雞肉棒. I quite liked the teriyaki sauce they used and it was a decent dish to serve. Though C did not like it too much due to the lack of softness of the boneless chicken part. We both thought the taste of the dish was satisfying. Thank god as the meal progressed towards the end, there was something that we actually liked - 三文魚頭野菜鍋! There were lots of ingredients inside the pot such as assorted vegetables, mushrooms, tofu and most importantly, the quite-luxurious cooked salmon's head! Both of us loved it as the ingredients were of a fine quality and blended in with the taste of the soup very well. Though the soup was slightly spicy (taste of kimchi somehow?), it was actually great in keeping us eating! Two bowls of 海鮮炒飯 were served with the hot pot. Despite its softness of the rice, it tasted quite like the normal fried rice that one could find in a cha-chan tang (茶餐廳). There were not much ingredients found inside the bowl - generally, quite a plain bowl of fried rice. Last but not least, the green tea ice cream. From the groupon website, the dessert was very nicely shown to be some cups of Dryers ice cream and something else that looked fine. However, it turned out to be nothing of that sort. When the bowl of ice cream was served, it was extremly HARD! Like it was the hardest ice cream I ever had in my life - like a rock, and by the absolute coldness that I could feel from a slight touch of the bowl...all I could do was to give a cold laugh at the end of my meal.. Do they expect customers to eat it straight away in such a condition? Or wait for another 2-3 hours?

By the time we once again felt disappointed just by feeling the ROCK-ALIKE ice cream, C and I were so COLD (because of the air conditioning) and DISAPPOINTED that we did not even bother finishing the icecream, but to pay the bill and left immediately. Never would I return to Habitat again. It made me wonder could they survive any longer even by the strategy of promoting groupons with such standard of food and setting? I'm sorry but in no reasons could I persuade myself to like this restaurant..

- Y