May 27, 2012

Belated Mother's Day Dinner @ Umai-ya

This is a food review of the Umai-ya Japanese Restaurant @ IOI Boulevard Puchong. loljk

Was craving for some Japanese food for no reason -- other than Japanese food being AWESOME! My mom needed some motivation to bring me out to eat ... and it resulted in a hole in my pocket. Nevertheless, cravings were fulfilled and I hope it doesn't come back to haunt me any time soon.

I ordered the Set B of their special promotion in conjunction of parents' day.


Dish #1: Itako Kyuli. Just your usual seasoned baby octopus, one of my favourite dishes to order at Japanese restaurants. Nothing special though.




Dish #2: Salmon and Maguro Sashimi. Maguro is tuna, right? Not a big fan of sashimi ... no idea what the ideal taste would be like. (So much for having a craving for Japanese food, eh?) 




Dish #3: Chicken Katsu. I hate it when my friends and I go to a Japanese restaurant and they order chicken katsu rice. Dude, you're in a Japanese restaurant, and you order a dish that tastes like what you normally eat? Okay, maybe I have issues ... and I might sound condescending... but hey, that's just my opinion. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this dish. Chicken is good, sauce is good, even the flower is pretty.




Dish #4: Saba Shioyaki and Dish #5: Yasai Nabe. Saba Shioyaki is just the Japanese way of saying salt-grilled mackerel, maybe one day I'll be a professional food critic (I'll also settle with being a rich food connoisseur) and I can tell which dish is what without having to google it. It's not bad, nothing much to say about it. Didn't really enjoy the Yasai Nabe though. Either it's not that good or my mom and I do not like the taste of it. I would go with the latter.




Dish #6: Spider Maki. Love. It. Never knew soft-shell crab could be that awesome. I hope the next time I step into a Japanese restaurant and order any sushi with soft-shell crab in it (which I will definitely be doing from now onwards), it will not be disappointing. Or else I'd flip out. No idea why they call it spider though ...




Dish #7: Smoke Duck Kama Meshi. It's actually smoked duck meat and some fish, but the fish isn't mentioned, despite being worthy of it. We were quite full by the time this dish was served, but it's still good! Thank goodness the serving of this dish wasn't huge. You know that fried rice they serve during Chinese wedding dinners that almost no one touches because everyone is already super bloated by the time it's served and it usually isn't tasty at all? Yeah, THANK GOD this wasn't like that. People need to make more rice dishes like this and stop soaking it in oil. I generally hate fried rice. This was good.




Dish #8: Matcha Ice Cream. Er, nothing special here, just green tea flavoured ice cream. Wonder where they get their supply? I don't see this and other 'Asian' flavoured ice cream like black sesame in hypermarkets.



Verdict: Good, but waaaaaaay too much food for 2.Why didn't I bring my dad? He hates Japanese food ...
Price: Set was RM99, with 2 cups of ocha (what's the difference between matcha and ocha?) priced at RM1.50 each. It totalled up to RM118.50 with tax. 

(Oh gosh, it does look like a food review entry, except that there isn't much comments on the quality of the food due to my lack of experience in this field. My bad.)

The next time I go to Umai-ya, I'll just sit at the conveyor belt and maybe order à la carte(s)* (THE SPIDER MAKI!) 

*pluralising a French word. Yeah. Sue me. 

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Did not post these pictures on my Facebook/Twitter because I do not want to be a hipster pretentious food-connoisseur-wannabe. Hey, at least there was no Instagram filters. Also, it's the only platform where I could document my expensive dinner with the least people knowing about it. Heh. 

Chill, people who always post pictures of their food on Facebook/Twitter. I'm not judging. I just think that there's too much sharing on social media these days. Maybe if I had less people-I-do-not-really-know on Facebook ...

On that note:

-Kritz