Having checked out the menu of this Japanese 'High End' Izakaya, I vowed to come back for dinner 1 day. I guess although I'm aware of the small serving sizes in Izakaya dishes, the meagre servings you get here versus the very high price tag shocked us. Its like the Hong Kong version of 元気一杯, where a lot of things are charged at outrageous prices. The NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE? The Food Quality here is very high indeed and doesn't take shortcuts like its TST competitor. The food here is 2 notches above the other shop in terms of taste, preparations and presentations..
達's MENU -
There is a menu book, as well as a Seasonal Special's Menu with 1 side Japanese and 1 side Chinese, not dissimilar to 元気一杯. The Japanese items don't all correlate to the Chinese items, as one can see at least 3-4 missing on the Chinese side. On the other hand, was surprised to see 1-2 items on the Chinese side, not on the Japanese side. The Japanese items here aren't dissimilar to the ones you'll expect in a high end Izakaya but perhaps there's not as much truly seasonal or highly special Japanese dishes I'd come to expect - as occasionally you'll see really really seasonal, traditional food on the menu in places like 石屋, 桜 or even MIRA's 麺屋一平安, etc, etc. Of course, there's certainly many interesting traditional items on the menu, its just that some shop's seem to provide more 'specialised' localised regional food not usually available in Hong Kong...
By the way, the Japanese names probably aren't 100% accurate for some dishes we tried, as every shop writes it ever slightly differently:
玉子 - Fluffy eggs with good Japanese rice, but very expensive for $60. There's a good eggy taste but perhaps ever slightly too sweet for me. They gave us what looked liked 'fresher' wasabi but they tasted and had a texture like frozen-fresh wasabi rather than fresh grated ones, which is still way better than the powdered ones.
和牛ホルモン焼き - Horumon in Japan is confusing to customers, it probably confuses even Japanese people. It might refer to Pig/Beef/Poultry Offals as a general word in Japan, or at specialty shops, but when you order it in a restaurant or izakaya, you're bound to only get 腸 and non of the other internal organs. The Horumon we got on this occasion was really fatty 腸, that looked like 竹腸 - which came a bit unexpected for me as 五味鳥 served me non-fatty, halved 小腸 a bit further down, when I ordered the 'same dish' last time. This tasted really good, but I didn't want the fat in reality as its getting Summery hot. Very expensive at $120 for only few pieces, I thought it was a bit of a rip-off.
竹の子わかめ煮 - This was done exceptionally well. Sliced up rather nicely, well marinated and cooked, perfect texture. Side with seaweed. But ultimately, too expensive for the niggardly portion for around $60.
海老マヨネーズ - A chinese dish, haha. I liked the version here as it had very little batter, unlike most shops serving the same in Japan Izakaya's. It was a bit boring though as there's no 'crisps' or anything else to accompany it. Too expensive as well.
鯵のフライ - This dish was not good, it lowered the final overall score. The panko batter wasn't a good panko, the colour of the fried batter was dark brown rather than golden, it was very slightly oily (but not as bad as 元気一杯's), the 鯵 Aji fish inside was over dry and has lost its taste. This dish shouldn't have left the kitchen and be served to customers, considering its high price tag. This however came with a dressed salad that was refreshing and the tomatoes really amazing, the fish's dipping sauce with mustard was really good as well. But the frying... Fried dishes in Izakaya's are often done very badly for some reason, even my other favourite 桜 doesn't get it too right, well nor does the over-rated 丼吉 for that matter. I can probably name a dozen more. 石屋 seems to do this really well though. Strange.
Drink - 1 x Big bottle of Beer.
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In an Izakaya, we normally order dishes along as we drink. However we noticed how insanely small the dishes were here and decided to end it right there after the 1 or 2 rounds... and to move on, eat somewhere else afterwards.
In hindsight (or with foresight), this was the right decision. For the very little dishes you saw us eating and only 1 beer shared between 2 people, the meal had already costed us $576. I've certainly learnt my lesson from spending $900 in 元気一杯 for below average food that still didn't fill me and another person up. At least the food here is way better than the other shop.
I loved the food here by the way. Some foods were '5' standards. Some were below, in the '3'-'4' range. A very high '4' and definitely a '5' if they get the fried food right. Would love to come back, it someone else's was paying!
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