En Japanese Bar and Restaurant
This place is very new. I wouldn't normally go somewhere unreviewed like this, but it's nearby, and sounds interesting.
The waiter is very pleasant and informative.
The waiter informs me that the place is aiming to do traditional Japanese cuisine, which means lots of small dishes.
Excellent tip: When ordering tapas, order one dish at a time.
Stewed and flame-grilled rolled pork belly slices with mayonnaise and spring onion.
I'm expecting some plain meat with some overly-strong spring onion. However, this is nothing of the sort. The meat is soft, and has three subtle tastes: the slight browning of the meat, the tang of the spring onions, and the zesty cream. It's an excellent meat dish, in anyone's book.
Served with honey mayonnaise.
I'm told this is actually very tasty, despite looking simple.
The honey and mayonnaise do actually mix together to create a very simple sweet and sour sauce. However, there's not enough of it, and the last half of my chips are all mopping up a spot of pure honey.
This is an interesting taste that I wouldn't mind as a snack, and it's not bad as a vegetable dish, but it's certainly not fine cuisine.
Japanese style skewered chicken mince patties with ginger and tare sauce.
I ask the waiter "how do you skewer a patty?"
The patties are soft, and not too much different from regular cooked chicken. They're moister, and have a bit of spring onion in them. The ginger and tare sauce provides a but of salt and tang, but it doesn't stop this being two big pieces of mushed up chicken.
Deep-fried tofu in broth.
I ordered this because I wanted some reasonable proportion of vegetable in my dinner. This dos just had too many strange and pungent tastes in it for me. The pile of mashed white daikon radish and the spring onion both added oniony tastes, while the broth itself had an unidentifiable taste. I enquired and discovered that the broth was actually made of shavings of tuna that's been dried solid like wood. Interesting.
I'm not bloated with feed, and could probably fit in another course or two, but I won't. Most people would eat 4-6 courses here.
The 'zert menu is rather sad, but this is the case at almost all Japanese restaurants. There's green tea ice cream, and there's sesame ice cream. Rather than eat this stuff, and mark it poorly, I think ill just skip dessert at Japanese restaurants from now on.