Once again, we tried to book a popular Japanese restaurant in Causeway Bay at the last minute. No luck. Too many people going for the weekend lunch special. So, we thought of trying Sushi U instead since they have some of the highest-quality Japanese food we've tried in HK. Plus they are close to home.
As we found out, they have an excellent lunch buffet + à la carte for HK$ 380/person. It wasn't as inventive as, say, the weekend lunch buffet at another popular restaurant in Landmark. But the quality was superlative, there was a wide variety, and we almost needed a forklift to get us back out the door. For hungry people this lunch special is incredible value for money.
The menu items include:
• 5 pieces of sashimi
• all-you-can-eat sushi
• a shrimp and vegetable tempura set
• a mini rice bowl (e.g. chirashi) with several topping choices
• miso soup plus egg custard
• coffee/tea to finish
The buffet included:
• four kinds of sushi rolls (e.g. salmon skin, spicy tuna)
• yaki sticks (no tori) incl. leeks, mushrooms, etc.
• grilled cod, shishamo, eel
• fried foods incl. chicken karaage
• bacon and tomato salad
• gyoza
• oden
• udon bowls
• dessert: tiramisu, coconut pudding with mango, and several others
I have left out a few of the buffet items I'm sure.
Everything tasted fresh and up to the standard of the meals we've had here before. The octopus sushi I had was not as tender as I've had at that other place we couldn't get into, but that was the only weak spot. The chu-toro was rich and melt-in-your mouth, the uni was excellent, the botan ebi creamy and not mushy, and the tempura was very lightly battered.
Most surprisingly, the dining room was only sparsely populated when we sat down to eat at 1:00. A few more tables came in but it was a surprising contrast to the carnage in CWB Japanese restaurants at lunch time. It's not as cheap as those places, but Sushi U offers consistently high quality and I still can't get over how much they offer for the price. I have had crappy take-out Japanese meals in New York featuring rolls with kilos of rice in them that cost more than this set lunch.