Oh yes, another food post.
Obviously I cannot beat Hansel who is already an “amateur” food blogger but still, I’m a food junkie at heart.
So yesterday I went to a Japanese restaurant at Far East Square(It’s at CBD. You know the place with entrances called ‘Fire Gate’ and such) and I can safely say, that it is one of the BEST Japanese restaurants that I’ve ever been to. Because I really felt like I was back in Japan eating their authentic dinner set(or whatever you might want to call it), and the ambience ahd nothing to do with it. It’s all about the food.
So this is the restaurant name
I know the lighting sucks. It probably says ‘BoTan’ with the red characters.
The black Kanji characters below say ‘Ri Ben Liao Li’ in Chinese, loosely translated, “Japanese Cuisine’.
And I ordered a ‘tempura sushi set’
Clockwise:
tempura(3 prawns, 1 pumpkin and 1 aubergine/eggplant/brinjal)
chawanmushi
some pickled thing on a small saucer
miso soup
dipping sauce for tempura
soy sauce for sashimi
rice
salmon sashimi (you can actually have yellowtail and tuna sashimi as well but I only like salmon so I requested for ONLY salmon)
Plus, it came with this side dish
Some soup thing with egg, radish, broccoli, japanese fish cake(the one with swirls) and a huge slab of another type of <what seems like> fish cake.
And we didn’t stop there, we shared a side order sushi.
Soft Shell crab sushi with tobikko outside
I know. The way they arrange it is so simple yet so artistic. And it actually comes with mayo(whcih I know is something like 99% fat).
So really, if you don’t mind paying a bit more(about $20-25 per set and $10 for the dish of 10 sushis) you SHOULD patronize this restaurant. No doubt it isn’t that famous, but its usually the small, select restaurants that offer the best quality cuisines.
*Oh yes, I heard its really crowded on Sundays because a lot of Japanese eat there.
Franchise chain restaurants somehow irk me because it seems as though they’re setting up restaurants for money and business and not to share the joy of the culinary arts. Besides, I’ve always believed that its quite difficult to maintain a certain quality once you start franchis-ing restaurants. More often than not, the authenticity is lost and the quality just drops drastically.
