Showing posts with label japanese food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label japanese food. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Sushi Ai, O'Fallon, MO
Post number 100!! Woohoo!!
Alrighty, enough of that.
Next up is Sushi Ai. Sushi Ai has several locations in the area, but the only one I've been to is the one on Hwy K in O'Fallon, MO (so I can't attest to the quality of the others). More specifically, it's located next to Dierbergs at 2981 Hwy K, O'Fallon, MO 63368. Their website offers the menu, ordering online for pick-up or a quick dine-in, and the ability to make reservations.
In addition to a full menu of Japanese food, they offer an all-you-eat sushi special for lunch and dinner. The all-you-can-eat lunch special is just $12.99 while the dinner version is $17.99. Also, it's available 7 days a week. Now, you may be thinking that your selections are fairly limited and it's not very good, but that isn't the case here. You're given a pretty robust sheet to fill out with how many of an item you want. The options include some appetizer items, like miso soup and vegetable tempura, a selection of 7 or 8 sushi items, and a wide variety of rolls to choose from (I'm partial to the California roll and avocado roll).
The all-you-can-eat menu
Here are some shots of some of the food that either I or my dining mates have ordered.
Greg's selection. I don't remember what he ordered, but that's a Missouri roll on the end closest to the camera.
Matt's selection. I don't remember what he ordered, either.
My noms: a cucumber roll, California roll, avocado roll, and avocado sushi.
After we received our order, we put in another for our second round. It took forever and a day to get our second order, so if you're going during the week on lunch break from work, put in everything on your first order. Now, I'll warn you that on the menu they say that if you don't eat all of what you order, they will charge you extra for what you didn't eat. I'm not sure of the truthfulness of this, but we finished all of our orders so it wasn't an issue. Now, I don't eat a lot of rolls or sushi since I don't eat fish, but what I ordered was really good. So good in fact that I made my brother, Wes, and Doug go back with me on the following Saturday so I could gorge myself on sushi-goodness again. The guys ordered off of the menu and I ordered a buttload of sushi.
Why yes, that is seven rolls of deliciousness. And I ate them ALL, bwahaha!
Doug ordered the chicken yaki soba, I think.
Wes ordered the teriyaki chicken.
My brother watching the teriyaki chicken sizzle.
My brother had ordered the Missouri roll and gyoza (dumplings), but I didn't take a picture of them. I think I was too busy eyeing my plate of rolls. Anyway, everyone said their food was really good so I didn't feel as bad for railroading them into going here with me so I could fulfill my avocado roll fantasies. As for my grub, the avocado has always tasted really fresh and creamy, the seaweed doesn't taste fishy, and the rice is, well, sticky :)
The servers here are friendly enough, but I'd watch the floor. The floor is very slippery for some reason. It feels like they've polished it too much or maybe they have too much soap in their mop buckets and it dries with a soapy film. It may also be from humidity, I don't know, but just watch your step when you're walking.
So, if you're looking for some good Japanese food at a reasonable price, definitely check out Sushi Ai. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the selection, quality, and price.
Bonus pic from today's lunch (7/16/2013):
Avocado sushi, avocado rolls, California rolls, and a honey roll.
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
Mother's Grill - Chinatown, Las Vegas
Yes, Las Vegas has a Chinatown. And they have a website. So, if you know me, you know that I absofuckinglutely looooove Chinese food. Especially Springfield-style cashew chicken. Yeah, that's right, we created that deliciousness in SW Missouri. But, I digress. So, when I'm in the US, I have to try to have American Chinese food at least once. So, while taking a taxi back to my hotel one afternoon, I asked my taxi driver, who was Asian incidentally, "So, can you recommend any good Chinese restaurants around here?" And because I didn't want to seem racist, I hastily added, "Or Mexican restaurants?" The nice fella informed me that there was a Chinatown located maybe a mile behind my hotel, recommended a restaurant to check out there, and told me they had a website I could look up to get directions and such.
So, I browsed around the web site and decided that I would take Doug there after he arrived one night for dinner. Who would've thought we'd have a Chinatown nearby? Now, our getting there was an adventure, which I will tell you about now. Apparently I'm shit at telling directions outside of Missouri. I think Korea has broken my internal compass. So, my directions from the hotel to Chinatown said to turn 'x' direction on Spring Mountain Rd...Spring Mountain Rd curves around my hotel, so I had no clue which direction was which, so I panicked and turned the wrong way. Of course. So, we drove the wrong way for a bit looking for a place to turn around and head back the other way with the idea to take a cross road back over to Spring Mountain Rd. Nope. We end up on a highway type road. Shit. I pull us off on a road name that I recognize and kind of head towards what I hope will be a road that can take us back to where we want to be. If not, we'd just stop somewhere random and eat since we had tickets to see Penn & Teller later that evening. Finally, I say to Doug, "Ok, the next light we'll turn left and see where it takes us." We turn left, and I see Hangul (Korean) on a building, then Chinese characters. Doug and I look at each other in startled disbelief - I had somehow bungled us directly into Chinatown! Moral of the story - buy a damn compass.
This is the only non-blurry pic...
We look around at our options, and I inform Doug that we're having Korean BBQ. Since he won't visit me in Korea, I'll bring a bit of Korea to him.
Yes, he is using a fork. The boy can't use chopsticks to save his life.
We ended up going to a place called Mother's Grill. It wasn't bad and it was reasonably priced, I think.
A few of the meat options
There were a few issues I had while trying to order our food. We waited for several minutes for the guy to bring the meat out for us to cook, but apparently since we only ordered 1 order of meat, they were going to cook it in the back and bring it out. A minute later, he comes out with the raw meat and tells me that they hadn't started it yet and turns on our grill so we can cook it ourselves - very nice of him :)
The meaty meat
So, then, since I'm apparently the demanding kind, I asked him if we can have some sesame leaves for the meat. He said that for the type of meat we ordered, the salad was the base for it. I wasn't happy with that since a lot of the leaves in the "salad" were bitter and I wanted sesame leaves, dammit. So I then asked him, "Well, can I purchase some sesame leaves on the side?" He looked kind of surprised and said, "Oh, well, yes. Give me a second." A few minutes later he comes back out carrying a small plate and looking kind of sheepish, "I'm sorry, the leaves are very small, so I'm not going to charge you for them." They were tiny. It was pretty comical to hold up a leaf half the size of my palm - I didn't take pictures of them, my bad. I think I ended up kind of sandwiching the meat between two leaves for most of it.
So, that was our Korean BBQ adventure in Las Vegas. It was no Hwasarang and not as good as the BBQ in Korea, but if you've never been to Korea, then you won't know the difference :) There are a lot of restaurants in Chinatown to choose from: Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese... So if you want to get off The Strip for a bit, I definitely recommend checking the area out!
So, I browsed around the web site and decided that I would take Doug there after he arrived one night for dinner. Who would've thought we'd have a Chinatown nearby? Now, our getting there was an adventure, which I will tell you about now. Apparently I'm shit at telling directions outside of Missouri. I think Korea has broken my internal compass. So, my directions from the hotel to Chinatown said to turn 'x' direction on Spring Mountain Rd...Spring Mountain Rd curves around my hotel, so I had no clue which direction was which, so I panicked and turned the wrong way. Of course. So, we drove the wrong way for a bit looking for a place to turn around and head back the other way with the idea to take a cross road back over to Spring Mountain Rd. Nope. We end up on a highway type road. Shit. I pull us off on a road name that I recognize and kind of head towards what I hope will be a road that can take us back to where we want to be. If not, we'd just stop somewhere random and eat since we had tickets to see Penn & Teller later that evening. Finally, I say to Doug, "Ok, the next light we'll turn left and see where it takes us." We turn left, and I see Hangul (Korean) on a building, then Chinese characters. Doug and I look at each other in startled disbelief - I had somehow bungled us directly into Chinatown! Moral of the story - buy a damn compass.
We look around at our options, and I inform Doug that we're having Korean BBQ. Since he won't visit me in Korea, I'll bring a bit of Korea to him.
We ended up going to a place called Mother's Grill. It wasn't bad and it was reasonably priced, I think.
There were a few issues I had while trying to order our food. We waited for several minutes for the guy to bring the meat out for us to cook, but apparently since we only ordered 1 order of meat, they were going to cook it in the back and bring it out. A minute later, he comes out with the raw meat and tells me that they hadn't started it yet and turns on our grill so we can cook it ourselves - very nice of him :)
So, then, since I'm apparently the demanding kind, I asked him if we can have some sesame leaves for the meat. He said that for the type of meat we ordered, the salad was the base for it. I wasn't happy with that since a lot of the leaves in the "salad" were bitter and I wanted sesame leaves, dammit. So I then asked him, "Well, can I purchase some sesame leaves on the side?" He looked kind of surprised and said, "Oh, well, yes. Give me a second." A few minutes later he comes back out carrying a small plate and looking kind of sheepish, "I'm sorry, the leaves are very small, so I'm not going to charge you for them." They were tiny. It was pretty comical to hold up a leaf half the size of my palm - I didn't take pictures of them, my bad. I think I ended up kind of sandwiching the meat between two leaves for most of it.
So, that was our Korean BBQ adventure in Las Vegas. It was no Hwasarang and not as good as the BBQ in Korea, but if you've never been to Korea, then you won't know the difference :) There are a lot of restaurants in Chinatown to choose from: Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese... So if you want to get off The Strip for a bit, I definitely recommend checking the area out!
Monday, July 4, 2011
Misoya
Next up is a typical Japanese chain in Korea: Misoya. This used to be one of my favorite places to eat when I was teaching at Avalon years ago since there was a branch located right across the street from the hakwon in Dong Suwon. You can find these just about everywhere (or a similar place) in Korea. There are two in the Yeongtong area: one next to Papa John’s (near 1 danji) when you enter Yeongtong (where Kyochon Chicken used to be :( *sad face*) and one located diagonally from Homeplus near Nilli’s.
One of the best things about Misoya is that it’s not expensive: most meals will run between 6000 and 9000 won and are filling. I can’t comment on the quality of the sushi since I don’t eat it, but I’ve heard it can be hit and miss from my friends. However, I have tried the California rolls – I just pretend the fish roe are sprinkles ^^ (Yay! Sprinkles!!) The pork cutlets sometimes seem a little undercooked, and I’ve had to ask them to cook it longer. Pork is one of those meats that I absolutely have to have cooked all the way. I don’t go here as often as I used to, so I don’t have pictures of a lot of the food, but I do have a few (poorly taken) menu shots.
In addition to sushi and pork cutlets (donkasu) they have udon and bulgogi dishes.
The dish that I’ve been getting the most lately is the mozzarella cheese and pork cutlet. This is basically a mozzarella stick with some pork in the middle.
Meals also come with a cabbage salad with a...weird dressing on it. It used to be a Thousand Islands type dressing, but now I don’t know what it is. You also get a cup of miso soup, a bowl of rice, radish kimchi (ggakdugi, I believe), a dipping sauce for the cutlet, and some corn slaw (basically corn, peas, and carrots in a mayo dressing).
The food, to me at least, seems alright as far as quality. I would imagine Misoya is the Japanese-food equivalent of McDonald’s, so I wouldn’t base my whole Korean-Japanese food experience on Misoya. For a quick dinner or lunch, it’s a decently priced place to stop in and grab a bite to eat.
One of the best things about Misoya is that it’s not expensive: most meals will run between 6000 and 9000 won and are filling. I can’t comment on the quality of the sushi since I don’t eat it, but I’ve heard it can be hit and miss from my friends. However, I have tried the California rolls – I just pretend the fish roe are sprinkles ^^ (Yay! Sprinkles!!) The pork cutlets sometimes seem a little undercooked, and I’ve had to ask them to cook it longer. Pork is one of those meats that I absolutely have to have cooked all the way. I don’t go here as often as I used to, so I don’t have pictures of a lot of the food, but I do have a few (poorly taken) menu shots.
In addition to sushi and pork cutlets (donkasu) they have udon and bulgogi dishes.
The dish that I’ve been getting the most lately is the mozzarella cheese and pork cutlet. This is basically a mozzarella stick with some pork in the middle.
Meals also come with a cabbage salad with a...weird dressing on it. It used to be a Thousand Islands type dressing, but now I don’t know what it is. You also get a cup of miso soup, a bowl of rice, radish kimchi (ggakdugi, I believe), a dipping sauce for the cutlet, and some corn slaw (basically corn, peas, and carrots in a mayo dressing).
The food, to me at least, seems alright as far as quality. I would imagine Misoya is the Japanese-food equivalent of McDonald’s, so I wouldn’t base my whole Korean-Japanese food experience on Misoya. For a quick dinner or lunch, it’s a decently priced place to stop in and grab a bite to eat.
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