Jac ordered a garden salad, which was mostly just iceberg lettuce. Not very exciting, but the lettuce was crisp and fresh and very nice for a change – we’ve been eating lots of other salad greens, fancy cafe-style curly lettuce, cos lettuce, spinach etc. lately. The dressing was an oil-based pineapple dressing. It was a little on the sweet side for me, but Jac really liked it. There were real pieces of crushed pineapple in it. Because of the separate compartments for salad and dressing, you really had to dip the lettuce into the dressing, as pouring dressing over the salad simply was not possible. I suppose we could’ve asked for a spoon…

To go with the salad, Jac’s main course was the Edo deluxe sashimi combination, which included scallop, tuna, clam, salmon, raw and cooked prawn, and scampi cocktail. There was also a generous pile of pink Japanese pickled ginger (looking almost seafoody too, on the plate), and a rather large wad of wasabi. Way too much wasabi for the average person, I reckon!

The sashimi was served in a boat-shaped dish. I want some boat-shaped dishes for home. I’d love some interesting shaped dishes! Regular readers will know very well that I am not a fan of sashimi, because I don’t like its taste or texture. If you weren’t very familiar with sashimi or were a bit squeamish thinking about eating raw fish (as some people are), I reckon one particular aspect of this dish would’ve actually been a real turn-off – the raw prawn. Usually it is clear the sashimi has been precisely and skilfully sliced, and then presented beautifully so that it doesn’t make you think of dead uncooked seafood, but I think the prawn head with the pile of greyish raw prawn meat wasn’t particularly appealing – it just looked like a dead mashed up prawn to me! What do you reckon? :) Jac enjoyed this dish, which is the most important thing (never mind what I, a mere non-raw fish eating onlooker, thought!)

I ordered a very “me” dish – the chicken karaage bento, which included a bowl of miso soup, salad with more of that pineapple dressing, two pieces of cooked tuna mayo sushi, steamed rice topped with a light sprinkling of black sesame seeds, and the chicken karaage – marinated chicken, battered and deepfried and served drizzled with barbecue sauce, with a plump blob of creamy mayonnaise on the side. The tuna mayo sushi was delicious, and the rice was a perfect clumping consistency for eating with chopsticks.

The chicken was moist and juicy, and I did enjoy it, but in terms of flavour, I’ve tasted better karaage – better marinated chicken, better batter. This batter was paler and thinner than what I’m used to in karaage, and didn’t have quite the texture that gives you that satisfying bite that is so pleasurable when you eat deepfried chicken (cooked in oil that wasn’t quite hot enough, perhaps?).

The mayonnaise reminded me of those McDonald’s soft serve cones that used to cost 30 cents when I worked at McDonald’s – my first job when I left home at 18. I haven’t eaten a McDonald’s soft serve cone since then! You know what I like best in terms of McDonald’s soft serve? Eating fries dipped in sundae, preferably a hot chocolate fudge sundae – I love that chewy chocolate. Mmmmm, but again, haven’t had one of those since those days… One of my workmates now cannot believe anyone would want to eat fries dipped in sundae – I’m sure I am not the only one who loves this combo! Back me up here, guys – anyone else like fries and sundae together? :)