I went to dinner after Friday night training with friends from Kendo. It's someones birthday on Tuesday and so we decided to have dinner for their birthday. They nominated a Japanese restaurant called Wagaya and so when we called, they told us that the earliest room booking available was 8:30pm, a good two hours wait. Well, it was a weekend I guess and nothing really happening since the Jay Chou Concert was on and lots of people had disappeared for that. So, we bummed around Galaxy World (an arcade centre) in Market City at Chinatown for a little while talking before going across to Wagaya.
It was my first visit to the place and some of the others have been there several times. One of the features that makes it a trendy eatery is that you order through touchscreen whenever you want, meaning that you never have to flag down a waiter, and when you want to go, you touchscreen your bill and they bring it to you. You can also bring up the bill on the screen so you know how much you've ordered and how much you need to pay etc.
We had eleven people for dinner in one of the rooms. The seating was cushions on a wooden floorboarded surface, with a table and pit underneath (so you didn't have to sit cross-legged if you didn't want to. There was also a LCD TV, DVD player and a heater. Someone had a kendo DVD of the Japan highschool championships, and that got loaded in. Food wise, we ordered $225 dollars worth or so, plus a $30 room booking fee being a busy Friday night. For me, I got $33 worth, with a Uni Chawanmushi (Sea Urchin Roe in a steamed egg mix), Salmon Otoru Sushi, Scallop and Garlic Fried Rice and unlimited Hot Green Tea.
The quality of the chawanmushi was really good, the flavour was gentle and penetrated through the whole egg mix, and there was a peice of fake crab meat on the bottom with some broad beans, and mushroooms. The salmon was ok, wasn't exactly the freshest, but being 8:30pm when we got into the room, that wasn't too surprising. It was fresh enough to not make you sick. The wasabi that they had also was pretty mild, and the white pickled (because sometimes you get yellow and red/pink ginger) was very thickly sliced ginger (I prefer the thinner sliced ones) and quite strong. The fried rice was served in a hot stone bowl, and boy was it hot! It keep cooking for about ten minutes by my estimate, so I ended up flattening it with my spoon and letting it cook a nice hard crispy side while watching the DVD before I could eat it. It was very tasty, the strong blend of the garlic and the very small (like 5 cent peice, so around 15mm diameter) scallops were scattered throughout. Having the crispy cooked rice also gave it an excellent texture contrast too. The green tea was okay, it smelt good, but tasted pretty ordinary, but I guess considering it was refill available, they wouldn't exactly make it out of highly expensive stuff.
So, we ate, talked, watched the DVD of highschool kids wallop each other. Those kids are scary good, scary fast.... and the girls were very butch looking lol. It was a little sexist in a way because some of the commentary about the girls matches weren't very flattering like how that person wasn't a girl, she must be a man...... and then their reactions on seeing their faces when they were interviewed lol....
Post dinner, we went to the Capital Theatre for icecream at Passionflower, where they kindly set up a table for the eleven of us, but then through circumstance, it only ended up with five of us sitting there and four of them ordering (I decided not to have any due to cost and weather conditions). Then back to the car and home.
Long night, long day, but not a bad way to finish it.
It was my first visit to the place and some of the others have been there several times. One of the features that makes it a trendy eatery is that you order through touchscreen whenever you want, meaning that you never have to flag down a waiter, and when you want to go, you touchscreen your bill and they bring it to you. You can also bring up the bill on the screen so you know how much you've ordered and how much you need to pay etc.
We had eleven people for dinner in one of the rooms. The seating was cushions on a wooden floorboarded surface, with a table and pit underneath (so you didn't have to sit cross-legged if you didn't want to. There was also a LCD TV, DVD player and a heater. Someone had a kendo DVD of the Japan highschool championships, and that got loaded in. Food wise, we ordered $225 dollars worth or so, plus a $30 room booking fee being a busy Friday night. For me, I got $33 worth, with a Uni Chawanmushi (Sea Urchin Roe in a steamed egg mix), Salmon Otoru Sushi, Scallop and Garlic Fried Rice and unlimited Hot Green Tea.
The quality of the chawanmushi was really good, the flavour was gentle and penetrated through the whole egg mix, and there was a peice of fake crab meat on the bottom with some broad beans, and mushroooms. The salmon was ok, wasn't exactly the freshest, but being 8:30pm when we got into the room, that wasn't too surprising. It was fresh enough to not make you sick. The wasabi that they had also was pretty mild, and the white pickled (because sometimes you get yellow and red/pink ginger) was very thickly sliced ginger (I prefer the thinner sliced ones) and quite strong. The fried rice was served in a hot stone bowl, and boy was it hot! It keep cooking for about ten minutes by my estimate, so I ended up flattening it with my spoon and letting it cook a nice hard crispy side while watching the DVD before I could eat it. It was very tasty, the strong blend of the garlic and the very small (like 5 cent peice, so around 15mm diameter) scallops were scattered throughout. Having the crispy cooked rice also gave it an excellent texture contrast too. The green tea was okay, it smelt good, but tasted pretty ordinary, but I guess considering it was refill available, they wouldn't exactly make it out of highly expensive stuff.
So, we ate, talked, watched the DVD of highschool kids wallop each other. Those kids are scary good, scary fast.... and the girls were very butch looking lol. It was a little sexist in a way because some of the commentary about the girls matches weren't very flattering like how that person wasn't a girl, she must be a man...... and then their reactions on seeing their faces when they were interviewed lol....
Post dinner, we went to the Capital Theatre for icecream at Passionflower, where they kindly set up a table for the eleven of us, but then through circumstance, it only ended up with five of us sitting there and four of them ordering (I decided not to have any due to cost and weather conditions). Then back to the car and home.
Long night, long day, but not a bad way to finish it.
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