Hanabi

A couple of weeks ago, we decided to head down to North Bridge Road to give Hanabi's ala-carte buffet another try. We went to the outlet at King's Arcade a year or so ago but Jeffrey was unimpressed with the quality of food so we took our chances and headed down to Hanabi's other outlet! Like Ikoi, this ala-carte buffet has a wide selection of Japanese food so I'm pretty sure Japanese food lovers will appreciate the wide selection of food. Hanabi's menu is slightly better than Ikoi's in terms of presentation because it actually has some pictures of food and little pink 'recommended' flower icons so you won't be completely lost when it comes to ordering food.

Because this buffet costs $30++/ person, I wanted to, in GT's words, 'stretch my money' so I placed an order for salmon and tuna sashimi! (: Frankly speaking, I was quite disappointed with it because it didn't taste as good as Ikoi's. The sashimi slices could have been fresher.

We also shared a tiny scoop of potato salad, which was unexpectedly creamy and good!

Chicken terriyaki satay was also good though I would suggest that you order two sticks per person because one stick is simply a little too pathetic!

Their salmon fillet with terriyaki sauce wasn't very nice - the salmon fillet was pretty dry and it was quite tasteless.

The tofu with terriyaki sauce tasted like agadashi tofu! I guess they use the same tofu cubes for both dishes just that the dressing is different.

One of my favourite dishes that day: pumpkin croquette! (: I don't know when I started liking pumpkin but I'm not regretting it because I realise I enjoy eating pumpkin, food with pumpkin in it & food that are made from pumpkin!

Prawn tempura and vegetable tempura. This dish looked like a golden platter because every item was golden brown! The prawns were pretty small but they were succulent enough. The vegetable tempura was so so.

Katsu chicken! (: How can we ever not have this dish when Jeffrey visits a Japanese restaurant? The portion's quite big so it's best to order this when you are extremely hungry or when there are two or more people who want to share this dish.

Tamago sushi and eel sushi. I thought the tamago sushi wasn't as nice as Sushi Tei's and the eel sushi was just.. bad. I think you should just stick to their 'recommended' sushis when you go to Hanabi.

Spider inari, which is basically softshell crab sushi in beancurd skin. This was pretty decent (:

Ooh this was GOOD! I can't remember what it's called but as you can see, there's prawn, cucumber & avocado in each piece of sushi. I hope you'll be able to try this when you go to Hanabi because I personally think this is one of their better sushis!

California roll. This was pretty average but it's a safe sushi dish to order (:

Garlic fried rice - fragrant, warm and not too filling, perfect to go with the other dishes that we have ordered.

Shoyu ramen with a piece of chicken. I've no idea why there was an extra piece of chicken in this dish but the ramen was not bad.

Wakame soba (warm). I prefer this to shoyu ramen because it had a lighter taste.

Plain udon - good for complementing our other dishes!

For dessert, Jeffrey had a scoop of vanilla ice cream ($2) which was of very inferior quality ): I think I haven't tasted such bad icecream in a long while.

I heeded the waitress's advice and ordered a scoop of black sesame icecream ($4), which honestly wasn't as fabulous as she made it out to be. Hmmm, are my standards too high or does Hanabi just not serve good icecream?

I think Hanabi's pretty value for money if you don't mind eating Japanese food of average quality but I would still recommend Ikoi for ala carte Japanese buffet! (: