NIHON 🎌

I got the salmon bowl lunch set ($12 plus $2 for salad, green tea and miso soup). The salad initially came with yuzu dressing and I was not expecting the spice to shoot through my nasal cavity like it did. Turns out its a wasabi variant of yuzu dressing. If you love wasabi for that reason, i would suggest you try this salad with the original dressing. Otherwise, the attendant offered to get me a new bowl and swopped it for goma (sesame) dressing instead. The salmon bowl wasn't impressive for me. It came with salmon sashimi, aburi salmon cubes and ikura (salmon roe). These were a bit tasteless. I suspect the slightly charred seaweed rice was meant to be a twist to the dish, but it ended up to be a bit too dry for me. Adding a bit of wasabi and mixing it into the dish enhanced the flavours a little. Maybe I would try dampening the dish with a bit of shoyu the next time around. A fairly decent dish overall.

I tried the chicken skin, chicken mid-joint and chicken soft bone yakitori (the latter two are as pictured). Chicken skin was really crunchy and affordable at $2 per stick, definitely a sinful delight. The mid-joint was reminiscent of hawker charcoal chicken wings but a less charred version. It was however a little tedious to eat with the bones through them. My favourite was hands down the chicken soft bone yakitori. Softbone lovers should definitely look out for this one.

Comfort food that I couldn't stop slurping. Addictive, but its a light soup just egg and spring onions so it won't fill you up. Good as a washdown for the yakitori.

This was pricey at $18, and a little too chewy for my liking.

The first thing that caught my attention was the crunch when I took my first bite, the coarse breadcrumbs created texture in the dish and complemented the meat for me. The pork was juicy and tender without being too oily. The only downside was a short tendon I found in my last piece of pork, but my friend didn't have this so it might be an anomaly. The curry was more of a gravy with some potatoes and carrots. I skipped the pickles, but this was definitely the part that would make me categorise the dish as comfort food. It was mildly spicy and not too thick, allowing the pork to remain the star of the dish. This was paired with a brown miso soup that had thin and soft beancurd skin strips as well as the usual wakame seaweed. The well-flavoured soup was savoury without being too salty, and served as a good washdown for the meal. What's great about this is definitely the price point. I have yet to find tonkatsu at 14.95 elsewhere, and while this isn't the absolute best, its a great bargain. I've already listed it as my "tonkatsu go-to without breaking the bank".