Monday, May 3, 2010

[JOM MAKAN] DINING AT HANAZEN, JAYA ONE P.J

Monday, May 3, 2010
Japanese food anyone? 4 friends and I went to Hanazen on May 1, 2010 and all of us leave the restaurant with a satisfying smile and a choice of favourite dish each.

When we first arrived at the restaurant, it was not packed but it seems that there is no suitable table for the 5 of us. Well, I can't really comment much on this as we should have place a reservation in the first place. In the end we decided to add a chair to a table for 4. I have to admit that it was a bit crowded especially when the foods we ordered were presented. Looking at the menu, we were surprised as the proportion of food shown were quite large. Hence, we decided to go for sharing basis. Plus, we wanted to eat more than 1 set per person. In total, we ordered 1 appetizer, 3 sets dinner and 5 desserts.   

We started off with Zaru Soba, Udon Suki and Chicken Teri set. When the food were presented it was not as large as suggested. Yeah, we were tricked by the power of photography. Still we had a minor problem as there is no enough space to place the food. 


Zaru Soba Set



Udon Suki Set

 
Chicken Teri Set


Back to the food, it was OK. Not bad and not outstanding either. Merit points were granted for the miso soup as it was tasty with lot of ingrediants (tofu, seaweeds) and the big prawns in the Udon Suki set. Even as we only ordered 3 dinner sets (we tried to ordered 4 dinner sets but one of it was sold out), it was quite fulfilling as  Udon Suki set were meant for 2 (the Zaru Soba and Chicken Teri set were meant for a single customer). Still, I believe that we can still eat and decided to add another dish, appetizer. Initially I decided to go for a dish of mash potato with cheese but it was not available so we picked Soft Shell Crab.

Soft Shell Crab

Ordering it was the highlight of the dinner! IT WAS DELICIOUS! Crispy on the shell and yet succulent and soft for the meat. It was tasty enough that we can eat it right away without dipping in the souce. Instantly, it becomes my favourite dish of the night. One of my friend feels that this dish is better than the one from Munakata. As for the serving, it was quite large and enough for the 5 of us.

Next, we were spoiled with the choice of ice-cream available. Apart from the conventional flavour like chocolate and some ordinary flavour that one can find in any Japanese restaurant such as black sesame, Hanazen also offers wasabi, lavendar, sakura, pistachio and citrus. There were others flavours but I can't recall those as the above are the ones that we ordered. However, we ended ordering 4 only as sakura, pistachio and citrus were sold out (again). Apart from that we also ordered Itachoco Monaka (dessert of biscuit with ice-cream and chocolate in the middle).


Lavender, Wasabi, Chocolate and Black Sesame

Among 4 of the ice-cream, I like black sesame the best. On another hand, lavender is something that I could not tolerate and certainly would not recommend. Both ice-creams were so rich in taste (especially the Lavendar ice-cream) that it lingers even after several cups of green tea.

Itachoco Monaka


My first encounter with Itachoco Monaka was at Sushi Zanmai and I liked it since then. So, it is something that I would not forgo when I saw it on the menu.

There is actually one corner in the restaurant set up for magazines in Chinese and English. So after finishing the meal, we stayed for a while, chatting and flipping through the magazines. We left the restaurant around 10 pm and yeah, I will be back! 

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