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2012-04-09
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We wanted salmon, lots of salmon, and didn't want to pay a premium, so we found this tabehodai place in Wan Chai, conveniently located between the two of us. It's nice to walk up a new building and enter a restaurant with some thoughts put into its decoration. The ceiling lights would have looked much nicer had they been turned on. We promptly sat down in our comfortable booth and hit the menu. The menu was a multi-coloured stack of paper with a ring binder and you ticked whatever you wanted, to
We promptly sat down in our comfortable booth and hit the menu. The menu was a multi-coloured stack of paper with a ring binder and you ticked whatever you wanted, tore it out from the pack and handed it to a waiter. My friend used the English version, and found "beef" under dessert.
After carefully translating and back-translating it with the Chinese menu, it turned out to be beer. Of course, duh. But that's good news for those who also want a nomihodai beer night too! For all those who can read Chinese, I strongly urge you to use the Chinese menu, as the English ones just gets handed to a clueless junior staff who has to re-tick all your items on the Chinese version to be handed over to the cooks. It's like playing Chinese whispers, no wonder some of our orders went AWOL.
There are several commonly seen problems with all-you-can-eat joints:
1) You order too much and feel like you have to finish them (or you have to pay the original price for that dish)
2) 30% of your orders never materialise. They've either lost your sheet of paper, or mistaken it with the next door neighbour's
3) Your orders come in a random order, sushi, noodles, salad, edamame, yakitori, stir-fried beef or veg, more sashimi, fried rice, tempura, sushi again... expect your stomach to be confused
4) The portions and quality can be dubious
The 2nd and 3rd points happened to us. Not that we mind food dropping in on us whenever they feel like turning up, but it was a little annoying to find whole sheets of order missing. This unpleasant effect was thankfully minimised by the helpful and courteous staff who offered to retake our orders, or double-check to see if it's in the production queue. For example, the cha shu (roast pork) took a while to "roast", by that I think they meant reheat, as it came pretty dry. The stewed pork cartilage was much fattier and tastier as it was soaked in the rich savoury sauce. One of the better cooked items was the garlic beef cubes, which was surprisingly tender and not too sinewy. The curry rice, sesame sauce cold udon and Japanese seafood porridge should have been omitted in hindsight, carb fillers do not do justice to a tabehodai joint.
Out of all the sashimi, the only thing of good quality was the salmon, the rest was dry and tasteless. The sushi were generally decent, but the so-called chili salmon and chili tuna was basically regular sushi with a squirt of red-coloured mayo on top, kinda like the ones you get in Subway. We tasted the sauce separately, and it was still tasteless. Extra calories for zero taste, plus it ruined the sushi too. Don't order those.
Some of items looked sparingly forlorn on its own, such as the single prawn tempura we ordered.
Others, however, was made to look much cosier by serving them in the tiniest plate you could find, even smaller than the soy sauce dish. An example would be the chicken kareage.
It was a mad eating frenzy, and although we tried to pace ourselves, the outcome was the same. We were pretty stuffed. But we still managed 4 sesame mochi for dessert. And finally, as it was Easter, the staff came over with a big basket of coloured plastic Easter eggs.
Inside was a $10 coupon and a sweet. Brownie points for the festive touch. For $280+10%, the quality of the food was better than others I've been to, and the location is a plus.
张贴