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2008-04-29
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Friend recommended this place, so a girl friend and i tried it on a Monday night. The minute you walk in, you feel like you've entered a local Japanese family's home - light wooden panes and tables, an open kitchen where the chef is seen diligently working, 3 waitresses that speak chinese and japanese, and mostly japanese customeres in suits, and the occasional chinese tai tai's or powerwomen who come here coz they know it's damn good. The place was clean and cosy, a little loud at times (coz
The menu was in Japanese, but the waitress immediately brought us an abridged version of the menu in Chinese, but offered to recommend other dishes to us. They were quite busy, as there are only 3 of them serving about 20-30 people, but you can see that they are genuinely friendly as most of the customers are regulars, one tai tai next to us commenting on how good the new haircut looks on the waitress. The needed reminding at first about refilling tea, but afterwards it was auto-mode, and they also changed your dishes and provided bowls etc without any prompting, plus wearing a smile for your customers always gives a good impression.
For the food we had:
3 appetizers (stewed beef tendon - a little spicy, very tender meat no stringy bits at all, seaweed root slices - very special, special tofu - skin had a nice chewy texture to it) - you can choose from a few dishes that the chef put out on the kitchen table top, then they heat it up for you. Quite big portions considering they are appetisers, some other very interesting dishes there too: whelks, seasnails, stewed fish, turnip slices etc. All looked so good!
3 types of sushi (salmon, hotate, ama ebi) - fresh, good sized portions, the ebi was glistening and still had that slightly salty seawater taste to it!
a grilled fish - small fish, sliced into half, a bit like weird looking actually, didn't know how to appreciate it, but the seasoning was good, not salty, and it definitely tasted fresh
beef and tofu pot,
mixed tempura - 2 large shrimps, lotus, mushroom, green pepper, eggplant etc... the batter was quite thin, but a bit soggy by the time it arrived, yet it didn't taste oily which was great
zhong hua cold noodles - large bowl, julienne cucumbers, ham (except it looked and tasted like the common ones you get in supermarket, those packs of pink strange-looking meat), egg slices etc... the noodel used was udon, had a great texture to it, and the sauce hit just the right spot, not too strong but brings all the flavours together nicely.
Overall the food is like what you will get if you visit a japanese friend and the mum cooks some traditional family dishes - simple but tasty. No wonder so many Japanese people come, it certainly would remind them of homecooking. Can't imagine how they survie the rent in a busy street in CWB, but i hope they keep up the good job and i'm definitely going to recommend this to anyone who wants to go to an authentic japanese restaurant that doesn't cost an arm and leg!!
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