Pricy, well prepared food. You pay for the ambiance
Girlfriend landed a pretty nice job, so we wanted to go out and celebrate. Being a local foodie, I know that Ginza and Feng are the top places in the state for sushi, so the girlfriend decided to treat me to this place in hartford.
First off, parking is limited to a few spots in front and a parking lot that's across the way. The parking lot charges 5 for parking under an hour, and 11 for parking under 2 hours. It's pricy for parking in hartford, but not unheard of.
Going into the restaurant, it's very well decorated and the ambiance is a very intimate affair. Black linens, black chairs, singular spotlights illuminating single spots on each table. everything is dark and purposeful. Staff wears all black with red accents, very professional and very accommodating.
We ordered a decent amount of food. We got a 10 oz filet, their signature maki, 2 sides, 2 sushi rolls (Surf and Turn and a Jalepeno roll), and 2 desserts (Crepe cake and Carrot Cake). Food comes out all at once, which was a pretty big error in terms of meal pacing. but it was fine, we took our pics and dug in.
The plating was well done. all the plates were pretty and decorated well. The signature maki and the steak were the best bites out of the meal.
The maki was fresh, composed and seasoned even though it was just raw fish. They showed awesome attention to detail and made sure that the bite itself had just enough composure to accent the star of the dish which was the fish.
The steak was cooked properly, seasoned and butter basted. The meat was tender, juicy, and flavorful. A very well done and properly executed filet.
The rest of the items were good, but were lacking the same attention that the other dishes had. The sushi rolls were prepared with premium ingredients, but they were not properly balanced. The surf and turf roll, the fried lobster had too much breading and the a5 wagyu was overcooked. the jalepeno roll was good, but there wasn't any flavors that were different or unique compared to a standard sushi restaurant.
The sushi rolls were presented in a way that made the overhead spot lighting cast a lot of shadows on the dish. there was no nice way to get pictures of the food, which was a shame.
The sides were very clean but also very generic. The mushrooms were an assortment of mushrooms, but very much just cooked mushrooms. The duck fat potatoes were potatoes cooked in duck fat, and nothing really else. They were high quality ingredients, but very generic cooking.
The crepe cake was unique. it's effectively like eating scoops of whipped cream with thin layers of eggy pancake in-between. Not bad, and glad to say I got to try it. The carrot cake was very much mostly frosting, and the cake was not in proper proportions for the amount of frosting.
The biggest issue was the price. Each item effectively came out to 20 bucks, with the steak commanding $60. I do not mind paying for quality, especially if those bites are very tasty. In this case, I have gotten better bites for cheaper in a few different locations. I can appreciate an attempt to keep flavors clean and simple, but I would expect there to be accents to emphasize the natural flavors of each item.
That with the price makes this place not great. It's good, but very pricy for what you get. It's a good place to bring a date if you're trying to impress, but if you're not trying to impress anybody then there's little here to bring you in. read more