Eating Out (Japanese)

Ever since we've discovered (rather late) about this branch of Sakura buffet at Balestier Shaw Plaza, we've been going to this branch.

This place is bigger, has better ventilation and slightly better food, especially the cooked food section, but their chairs are all the same, i.e. wooden stools.


We were there last Sat, after a massive cleaning up at home. There was a huge mess caused by the installation of the new aircon system, with lots of loose cement powder and concrete from all that drilling. We were so tired and famished afterwards that we thought we deserved a good meal (or just a lame excuse to eat)!

I was too busy and didn't take photos; these are from an earlier visit


Roast duck, oatmeal prawns (麦片虾), baked salmon, baked scallop & breaded oyster


Sashimi platter & sushi, etc.


Durian puff, eclair and mentaiko prawn

"Mentaiko" refers to the sweet orange paste and the name tickles me no end - think of men tiok tai ko (in Hokkien) and you'll understand. :p


On a separate day, we had lunch at Yuki Sushi Village (or something like that...?)


Conveyor belt sushi


Most things are priced at 99 cents, except for items on criss-crossed patterned plate which is $2.99


Some lobster thingy


The hand-rolled sushi are also $2.99 each

Quality-wise, the food is averagely acceptable, and I didn't expect the salmon roe to match those at better (and more expensive) Japanese restaurants. It's not bad a place for a quick and cheap sushi meal.

The story of "Too Full"

We were here - at Sizzler.



I just wanted to eat the stuff from the salad bar, which had quite a good spread already.



The SO, who must have something more substantial, ordered a main course - some Swiss styled chicken.



You can say, the man wanted to have his chicken and eat his salads too.



In addition, we were given some garlic/buttered toast to stuff ourselves, but it was way too salty, and one bite was all we could take.



I ate my salads, but SO insisted on sharing some of his chicken with me.

BTW, the Thai prawn & cashew nut salad (below) was superb! Too bad they didn't have tom yam soup that night.


This plate looks a bit dirty coz I re-used it (once).

We had several rounds of the salad buffet. As if all that wasn't enough, the SO can still stuff himself with the pasta, plus the Chinese fried maggie noodles and the creamy mushroom soup - all the heavy stuff.



Near the end, this was the dessert I had, with no room left for a taste of soft-serve ice-cream (actually, I forgot also).



And the SO was reduced to this.


Because he was, in his own words, TOO FULL !!

So, far from trying to save for a rainy day or prepare for rising food costs, it was because he ate too much!

Afterwards, we decided to walk home (to burn the excess calories consumed), which we did briskly, in about 50 minutes... Heheh! The walk didn't kill us, but the humid weather probably could if the walk was any longer. :P

Han River Korean BBQ

We went to this place last week, our first steamboat since the steamboat-overload during the CNY period. It's a Halal restaurant.

Actually, we didn't eat much of the bbq stuff, except for some marinated chicken and marinated fish. We ate the steamboat stuff mostly.



We ate more of the yong tau foo (fishcake was salty), toufu, vegetables, a few pieces of sushi & finger food (onion rings & chicken wings) and fruits. Between the two of us, we had 2 prawns. I thought I saw crab too, but we didn't have any.



The fruit platters were attractively displayed and had quite a good variety of fruits.



Sushi platter



Overall, the variety of food is wide and they provide several nice sauces (including satay sauce, which I didn't try) and condiment to go with the food. The quality is generally from so-so to good (some were better than others). We spent about $52 for 2 persons for a weekend dinner.

Kuishin Bo Lunch

We had lunch at Kuishin Bo on a Saturday in January 2008 (Oops, not December 2007, my lousy memory!). Lunch is cheaper than dinner, but had fewer special dishes. It didn't have the snow crab legs (so-so) and beef cappacio, which we don't eat anyway, so we weren't complaining. There were already too many items to eat, and we'd probably eaten about 50% to 60% of all the food items available...and that's already more than enough for us!

The appetisers...my favourite things to eat at buffets



Pretty shells



Some tempura, potato croquette and yaki udon and other yaki dishes



Fortune bag soup?


It's very cute, this tau-pok bag...the inside was filled with sticky, starchy stuff...like sticky yam or some starchy root vege stuff.



Other stuff in tasting portions, including Dorayaki, the fave food of Doraemon (小叮当） and mine too



Desserts shared with the SO...they're not my favourite things but must try a bit lah!


Black sesame mochi, macha cake, white chocolate with sour rasberry(?) topping and chocolate-coated apple from the chocolate fountain


I took this item because it looked so pretty!


But the inside is like this...too sweet for me.

That was in December, and also the month which partly contributed to my weight gain. As at 3 weeks' ago, I almost could not fit into an old pair of pants. It was too scary... :PP

Christmas dinner at Sakura

On a whim, we went to Sakura restaurant for dinner on X'mas day. It came to almost $30 per head, including 7% GST, which was slightly more than the usual price.

I noted the food was a bit different from the usual too, since it was X'mas, but of course, the usual favourite Japanese items like sashimi, sushi, etc. were all there. What was new among the appetisers were the pink prawn sashimi, the smoked salmon appetiser with some mango mayo sauce and smoked duck breast with orange mayo sauce. The hot items too, had some new items, including steamed prawn with garlic & butter*, yam ring, etc. (I can't remember coz my interest at buffets is always on the appetisers).


(* Maiden photo attempt with new hp camera)

In addition, there was roast turkey with stuffing*, honey baked chicken ham* and X'mas log cakes. Both the turkey and chicken ham were so-so. I'm not a dessert person, but I did like the green tea (minty) cake and chocolate log cake.

The bonus was when the chef brought out the scallop sashimi after the pink prawn sashimi ran out. That was like "Wow!" coz it's the very first time I've seen scallop sashimi at Sakura after all these years. We were lucky to have spotted it as we were seated just beside the sashimi platter...heehee! While it wasn't fantastic, it wasn't too bad either, so overall, it was a nice and rather satisfying dinner.

Ikoi Japanese buffet

We went to Ikoi for the a la carte buffet lunch which I'd heard so much about, mostly about the fresh sashimi that's good value-for-money. We didn't eat a lot, but I felt so full after eating most of the sashimi, and a bit of everything. The staff also gave out free soup, perhaps to fill up our stomachs faster? Kekeke...

It was about 12pm, so the lunch time crowd hasn't arrived yet.


Anyway, it wasn't a full house during the lunch, though I was told it's wise to book at least 2 to 3 weeks in advanced for dinner.

The complimentary appetiser - sake sashimi in a slightly sour (plum?) sauce.


I didn't know what that crispy stick of vegetable was (maybe mung guang?), but it was nice and the slightly bitter taste of raw dou miao contrasted well with the sauce...yum!

All tables were "decorated" with a bowl of edamame (Japanese green beans) and soramame (broad beans) that we could eat while waiting for our orders to arrive. Well, we sure don't want to eat too much of these at the start, since they're apt to create gas in the tummy.



The first dish I ordered - mixed sashimi, which has sake (salmon), maguro (tuna), mikajiki (swordtail), tako (octopus) and a dark fish (right next to the octopus) which might be hamachi (yellow tail)? I couldn't be sure coz I'd never had yellow tail before this.


The above is one person's portion. The sake was sweet and tasted great with just a teeny dip of soya sauce. The fish sashimi was generally quite soft, and everything was served cold, which is good.

Then came the yakitori (skewered chicken), tebasaki (mid chicken wing) and california handroll.
Perhaps we could have skipped the chicken wing, and I think I didn't taste any avocado in the california handroll ?


By the way, everything came in 1-piece portion per order, so if you want want more than one, you'll need to specify.

Then came the saba shioyaki (grilled mackerel) and agedashi tofu which came in a tiny piece - about 1 square inch each. These were good, except the tofu was a bit over crispy / hard at the top.



They started serving us the complimentary sake/miso soup. It has salmon, toufu and bits of vegetable. I guess it wasn't too bad except that it was too salty, so we hardly drank the soup.



Mixed tempura with prawns, shitake mushroom, sweet potato, brinjal and ladies finger...generally ok, though I think the batter was a little hard and too thick.


I guess if the batter mixture is too thick, i.e. not enough water, too much of it will stick to the vege, making the fried product hard, instead of light and crispy

The potato croquette was nice, with a curried layer in the middle. These 2 tiny pieces are considered 2 portions.



Ahh...more complimentary teapot soup which had a prawn head inside. The squeezed lime was definitely needed.



I ordered this by mistake, thinking it was soft-shell crab (which wasn't available). It's just one piece, but look at the way it's presented!



California maki, but as one can see, there was no avocado. :-(



Of course, I had to have another portion of sake and tako sashimi. It's just one portion but look how generous they are!


They were very good, but as we get more and more full, the law of dimishing returns sets in and my level of satisfaction per mouthful goes down somewhat...

The SO had the yaki udon, which was not bad.



Stewed meat and potato dish (niku jaga) - the dish that I want to learn to cook!



Broiled tofu (Atsuage tofu)



There were no desserts but there was free flow of hot green tea - all at a price of $33++.

While Kuishin-Bo has more variety, dinner there costs $46++ and it is impossible for anyone to eat everything from the buffet table, and I'd barely eaten one-third of the food the last time I was there, so I guess this smaller Ikoi buffet at a cheaper price is good enough for me.