Honjin

i haven't been to honjin for at least a year already! it was one of the japanese buffet restaurants my family used to frequent in the past. in fact, it is one of the first japanese buffet restaurants i remember going to. and it was the place where i first learnt how to eat...SASHIMI!!!! :D haha how appalling i thought it was last time, and now, I LOVE IT.

so anyway, i just had to start with the photo of our platter of sashimi! (: what honjin offers is an a la carte buffet at $40++ per pax, and if you want shabu shabu, you have to add $8++ per pax. well...after visiting this place again after so long, i have to say that i'm glad we came here only because of the 1-for-1 offer we had. because for $40, i don't think it was very worth it. in fact, we were pretty shocked when we saw the menu, because it was just a single, rather sparse page of words. and that was it. gahh. disappointed :( but at least the quality of food was good i suppose.

we started off with the sashimi platter, where there was an assortment of raw fish like salmon, tuna, yellowtail and i dunno what else haha. i loved the salmon here. quite often i prefer tuna, but the salmon sashimi here had a very nice smooth texture with a firm bite which i really liked!

oh yeah i forgot!  before our food was served, they gave us a complimentary serving of this refreshing jar of raw carrots and cucumber with a lovely sauce! i was trying to figure out what was it, but no avail. i think it's miso mixed with other interesting stuff! (:

there was also a complimentary plate of sushi! it was lovely (: pork floss on top with crispy bits of soft shell crab inside. i absolutely loved it. such a pity that there were only two types of sushi on the menu! :( this was a special dish that wasn't found on the menu.

i'll just go through all the dishes i had:

1. salmon head: lightly salted with smooth skin, this was a typical japanese dish which was not bad (:

2. grilled unagi: i always love the smell of unagi, the smokiness of the flavour is just nice, and i took a few nibbles of it. however, i can never seem to stomach an entire piece on my own. haha :P i guess it's just me.

3. agedashi tofu: one of my favourite japanese dishes! this was a wobbly piece of tofu, extremely fragile and delicate, covered with a very light batter which allowed it to still feel healthy even though we knew it was not

4. grilled mushrooms: i really enjoyed these! the musk of the mushrooms was wonderfully fragrant and it was cooked in such a simple way that brought out the flavour of the fungi, and it was delicious

5. potato wrapped in bacon on a stick: okay i have no idea exactly which dish this was. nothing very outstanding in my opinion. i couldn't really taste the potato because of the overwhelmingly salty taste of the bacon

6. grilled scallops: this was another dish which i thoroughly enjoyed. the scallops were fresh and bouncy, with a chewy texture and the light grilled flavour was very yummy

7. teriyaki chicken: this was a hot favourite at the table. the sauce was very tasty and we mopped it up eagerly with the pieces of chicken we had.

1. breaded chicken: actually i'm not even sure it's chicken. but that's what mummy said. i didn't really like it though. it just felt soooo unhealthy.

2. grilled chicken wings: hmm i felt that the teriyaki chicken was nicer? this was pretty interesting though. the chicken was super skinny, but that made the skin really crispy after it was grilled though. which was quite nice.

3. salmon salad: there were three kinds of salads. we tried them all. we loved them all. the salmon salad had a generous amount of salmon sashimi atop the veggies, and it was further topped with a huge amount of tempura flakes! oh so yummy!

4. yasai salad: i have no idea what yasai is. based on my guess, i would think it's the sauce. which was delicious by the way! :D

5. fried chicken: ah, i really liked this! it screams 'unhealthy, unhealthy, unhealthy!!!' but i thought it was really well done! it was flavourful, of course not like kfc, but i would say that it came pretty close, which was really great! i loved it.

6. chicken caesar salad: one dish that can't really go wrong, as long as you have the sauce xD

the soft shell crab in honjin is really well done! it's crispier and tastier than all the other soft shell crabs in other restaurants! this made the maki really yummy!

the fried garlic rice was another favourite. even looking at the picture now, i imagine the aroma of the garlic hitting my senses, and spreading through my mouth to the back of my throat. oh gosh, it smelled DELICIOUS. and tasted superbly awesome!!! i really have to learn how to make my garlic rice like this someday. more oil maybe. that's probably the only complaint i have about this dish. it was really oily. but i guess that's how it was so garlicky and tasty.

1. chawanmushi: a smooth wobbly egg with a fairly generous amount of ingredients. nice!

2. assorted tempura: i liked how the batter was light and didn't feel too unhealthy. but i didn't each much of it :P

3. fruit platter: there was a complimentary platter of fresh fruit at the end of the meal (:

4. su soba: this is the first time i've tried hot soba! hahaha. i always thought that it was served cold. anyway, it was a pretty interesting take on the normal soba. not bad! (:

5. macha ice cream: loveeeeee!!! each of us got a scoop of this (:

6. cha soba: simple & good.

i probably wouldn't be coming back here anytime soon. the quality of the food was good. but the variety for a price of $40 is simply not really worth it! and the service could have been better too. we were taking our time going through the meal, and it's not like we really took a very long time! but the staff kept hinting that they wanted to chase us out, by repeatedly asking whether we wanted dessert, and finally, at the end, they just simply asked, "can we bring the dessert out now?" i felt that it was rather rude? the restaurant wasn't even crowded!! tsktsk. so nope, won't be coming back.

Honjin

140 Robinson Road, Chow House #01-00

Tel.: +65 6222 2243

Lunch: 11.30 am – 2.30pm

Dinner: 6pm – 10.30 pm