日本野 (已結業)

Item: 日本野
Rating: 4
Author: eatwai

NIHON RYORI

869 食評

味道

環境

服務

衛生

抵食

30825

旺角

$101-200

日本菜烤肉壽司/刺身

731

eatwai

等級4

189

A small and quaint restaurant with a cozy Japanese vibe. Around 12 four-seater tables. I came here for birthday celebration with 2 senior citizens and I would tell the other customers were annoyed at how loud they were talking at, quite embarrassing 😅.

US Prime Beef Cutlet (石燒吉列霜降牛小排) $198.

Ordered this set off the dinner menu even though it was lunch time 🤣. The set came with a bowl of rice, miso soup and a choice of egg (onsen or soft boiled). The beef itself was not very fatty even though it looked fatty. The marbling looked appealing but it did not render off, leaving the piece of fat hard and chewy. The meat was also cut rather thick for a stone grill. The cutlet was absolutely unnecessary as it became soggy and crumbly. It was also too thin to be a good cutlet so this part was just for the aesthetic and I strongly recommend the US Prime Beef instead.

The seasoning that came with this was salt and garlic. Both of these enhanced the flavor immensely as beef itself always needs salt or some sort of seasoning to bring out its flavor.

What also came with the beef was a piece of beef fat. Now this really surprised me as not many places that does stone grill has this. The beef fat is to help lubricate the Stone so that it would be easier to grill the beef on, it also helps caramelize the beef and give it an appetizing golden brown color. Using beef fat also helps to maximize if not increase the beef flavor as well.

Grilled chicken kidney (炭燒雞腎) $28/2 skewers
Very small but delicious. Crunchy texture and distinct kidney taste. Each skewer has around 6 small pieces. Good 👍.

Japanese styled fried vegetables (和風炒野菜) $58
Absolutely amazing 🤩. A great variety of vegetables with carrots, zucchini, baby corn etc. all still crunchy and the sauce it was also delicious. Big portion as well, shared between 4 people.

Honey citron chicken wing (和風柚子雞翼) $68/ 5 pieces
Crispy fried chicken wing covered in a sweet and sour yuzu like sauce. The sauce is a bit too sweet for me but others seem to like it. The batter could have been thinner to make the exterior crispier but overall not bad.

The Seared Flounder and Sea Urchin Donburi $108 (火灸碟魚裙邊海膽丼) from the lunch set menu was delicious. There was only one 1.5 inch piece of Sea Urchin so that definitely was not the star of the dish. The Seared Flounder definitely blew me away with its fattiness. The searing made the fish oil leak out which increased its flavor immensely. Mixing the whole thing together combined the creamy sea urchin, fatty flounder, acidic ginger and spicy wasabi together, all holding on to the rice as a flavor vessel. I recommend taking the wasabi out before mixing everything as it can be too much for some people, gradually increasing the amount of wasabi each bite can also create different flavor profiles. I definitely recommend this dish, the size was also enough to be filling and you still have stomach space for a side dish. But don’t expect an abundance of sea urchin as you will be disappointed.

Seared Salmon sushi (火灸三文魚壽司) 🍣$26/2 pieces. Searing salmon helps render the fat in between the salmon meat, this cookery on the fat makes it taste much fattier and oilier as opposed to salmon sashimi. This seared salmon was delicious but definitely not freshly seared then served. The underneath of the salmon was still raw as it should be, but the top was not searing hot, just lightly warm. The sushi was dressed generously in mayonnaise and this could have been good or bad depending on preferences. The mayonnaise helped balance out the oiliness of the seared salmon with its freshness and creaminess. But there was quite an abundant of it compared to the salmon so the taste was very prominent and stayed throughout the aftertaste.

Deep-fried chicken cartilage (脆味雞軟骨) $48. Very big portion but did not live up to my expectations. The ratio of meat to cartilage was 3:1 in each piece, a lot of chicken meat with only one single crunch of the cartilage. The exterior of the chicken was also not as crispy as I thought, the batter was quite dipped quite thick and not thin which prevented a nice crispy crunch. I recommend this dish if you simply like fried chicken but not if you expect cartilage. There is also a small dollop of mayonnaise on the dish but definitely not enough for all the chicken 😅.

We were also going to order the Grilled beef tongue skewer but they were out of stock ☹️.

Overall, this restaurant is not bad for a Japanese lunch set. I also booked via Openrice and gained a discount of 12% ☺️. The final total was $1,193 and we were a group of 8 so the per person spending was only $150 which is a bit crazy if you think about it.