Judging from the past 2 reviews, I'm guessing that this place is a shadow of it's former self. In addition to these reviews, I've seen a food blog praising this place- it's what got me excited to try this place to begin with.
I wanted to celebrate the fact that I finally turned in my dissertation, so we went all out and ordered their 70 dollar dinner for two.
I may not remember every single thing that was served, but that's probably because it really wasn't worth remembering.
1) Small appetizer portion of....Chinese fast food style sweet and sour chicken (what the???? at a Japanese/Korean run restaurant?) (2)
2) Frozen diced peas, carrots and corn covered with melted cheese on a sizzling plate. (By this time, I was getting scared...but I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt) (1)
3) Huge sashimi plate- but there were only 4 slices of salmon (that didn't taste that fresh), 4 slices of maguro (that had been frozen for way too long). The rest of the plate was covered basically in loads of flounder and red snapper slices. Both of those fish are pretty much palate cleansers, in my opinion. There was some Uni that was halfway watery and halfway decent- egh. Oh, and there were a few other 'delicacies' that really didn't taste all that good, such as snails, and another shelfish-like thing that had a slightly bitter taste. (2)
4) Fish soup with tofu and vegetables. Okay, this looked pretty standard for Korean places- but the broth was bland. We actually had to add a decent amount of tableside soy sauce to make this soup work. I've typically got a light palate in regards to salt/soy sauce. They should've hired us to help them in the kitchen. The fish was sticking to the bones- which means it's been sitting too long before it was boiled in the soup. Gross. At least the banchan (4 of them) that came with this part of the meal were pretty good. But come on, it's pretty sad when the best part of your $70 dollar meal was the banchan. (2.5)
Separate from the $70 ripoff, we also ordered Uni nigiri, and a spider roll. The Uni nigiri was not absolutely disgusting...but it wasn't absoutely fresh or uniform in texture either! There were slightly slurpy portions mixed with drier more particulate portions. The spider roll was almost decent, but you could taste that the crab was definitely not fresh. (2)
In retrospect, an overall rating of 2 is perhaps generous, especially because this meal ended up breaking the century mark. The worst $100+ I've ever spent on a meal. I feel for this place, as there were hardly any customers, which is why I don't give it a 1. But perhaps this place needs to be put out of its misery. read more
