All You Can Eat | Izakaya Daikichi

My friend is heading back to the US tomorrow, so we kinda had a farewell dinner with her tonight. She wanted to have Japanese food, so we went for a "all you can drink" sake buffet. We went to Wellington Street and realised there were several Japanese Buffer restaurants nearby. We sticked to our original choice and went up the building next to Mannings.

The restaurant were full when we arrived so we waited outside at the lobby. There were lots of Polaroid sticking everywhere on the walls. Most of the polaroid had the phrase 'Happy Birthday' written on them. May be all birthday person can have a free snap there? There are two time slots available for dinner buffet, 6-830pm & 845-11pm at a price of $175 from Monday to Saturday and $155 during Sunday or public holiday.(Which was rather ridiculous having public holidays cheaper than normal working days).

There were tonnes of choices available from the stacks of order sheets. We ordered most of the food on the sheets and shared them so we could tried lots of different kinds of food.

Assorted Sashimi

The sashimi looked really appetising. We ordered a lot of Sweet Shrimp and Salmon. The Sweet Shrimp was rather small and tasted average. It was not sweet, so I assume it was not that fresh. The Salmon although was cut in large slices, were not fat at all, so it did not have a smooth texture. The Tamago was a flat sweet egg and was not made according to the traditional layering way. The Red Clam was chewy and quite nice. Overall, the sashimi tasted fine, and was at the quality that you could expect to get with this price range.

Assorted Tempura + Soft Chicken Bone

Yay, it's Tempura! There were a wide range of tempura to chose from. The Shrimp were in medium size, it was quite tender and fresh. The Octopus Croquettes's texture were solid, like crab cakes, but was not like those octopus mashed potato tempura that I had in Japan. The Sweet Potatoes were nice, but it kind of tasted like Pumpkin. The Pumpkin on the other hand had a strong taste of Pumpkin and were quite nice. The Rice Cake was very chewy and cheesy, It had a strong taste of butter and taste rather bad. In general, the tempura was not deeply fried, so the flakey coating was not that flakey at all. Fortunately it had a slight crispy coating and was not those flappy soft one.

The golden little crisps on the right top hand corner of the picture was the Soft Chicken Bone. they had a very crispy coating, a hot and tender filling. This soft chicken bone was a must try!

Bean Curd

The bean curd was average. The bean were quite nice. Yet I had once had this in some traditional Japanese restaurant and there should be some coarse salt on the surface of the bean curd. Well, although I would not expect they would have all the essences, but I would deeply appreciate it if they could put more details on their food.

Assorted Sushi

Hmm...I bet you could see from the picture, the sushi was not that fresh at all. A problem was that you couldn't really tell what was what by looking at it. On the bottom left were Wagyu Beef Sushi, then Toro Sush; where on the top left should be Scallop. The Wagyu Beef Shushi was good. It melted on your palate right after you had the whole piece in your mouth. The rice was pretty nice too. It was rather sticky and chewy. The Toro was not fresh and did not taste good. The texture was mesh-like.

Wagyu Beef BBQ

Another Wagyu Beef Dish! The restaurant does provide very nice Wagyu dishes, this Wagyu BBQ was one of those. The meat was  very tender and soft. It was extremely juicy and was nicely flavoured. The baby tomato was also grilled to give a slightly crispy skin. It was sweet in taste too.

Beef Hotpot

In the middle of the meal, we suddenly realized all four of us were beef lovers! So we further ordered two Beef Hotpots. Before having the dish, you have to mix the egg thoroughly in the pot, so the egg yolk could formed several white layer floating on the soup.  The hotpot soup base were sweet like Shabu-shabu which was very tasty. There were brown crystal noodles inside the pot which is my favourite and was SO good!

All you can Drink

You could literally drink anything in any quantity, whenever you like as long as they are in the menu. Last time they were doing all you can drink Sake, This time they were offering all you can drink beer. But we didn't have any bear. Don't be deceived by the 'Pepsi Coke' on the Drink list, it was literally 'Coka Cola'; the 'Pepsis light' was also in fact 'Coka Cola Light with Lemon'!

Overall, the food quality was just average, and hence so did their tastes. Yet there were dishes that were really good and worth recommending. For example, the Beef Hotpot, the Wagyu Beef BBQ, the Shrimp Tempura and the Sesame Chicken Wing. However when it comes to Japanese cuisine, I would not usually recommend Japanese buffet restaurants as the food quality won't usuallymake me satisfy. I just hate eating food just to fill my stomach.

Sweet Corn. Not Butter Made. Nothing Special.

Assorted Mushroom. Cooked with Shabu-Shabu sauce. Tasted like mushroom and were slightly on the soft side.

Fish. Got little bones on it. Not a big fan.

Izakaya Daikichi 居酒屋大吉
2/F Somptueux, 52-54 Willington Street, Lan Kwai Fong, Central
☏ 3621-0800
12:00-15:00; 18:00-23:00(Mon-Sun)
Dating of Dinning: 19 July 2010