Sakura House - Washington Blvd
First time visit this past weekend. We love grilled skewers and were looking forward to trying another place in our new neighborhood. Before we moved, we visited Nanbakan, FuRaibo and Terried Sake house regularly. Those were our favorites for casual noshing on various skewers. Short review, the food was very good and good value. The chicken skin skewer was the best I've ever had from all four places.
Long review. We all ordered a dinner course with our meals. We also ordered some extra dishes on top of the dinner courses. My wife chose the seasoned mixed rice. Friend and I opted for the rice with the ground chicken. I found the seasoned rice a bit on the gummy side for me. I liked the ground chicken bowl a lot. Meaty and juicy with a good texture.
Wife and I had the same dinner course containing:
Asparagus-Maki
Stuffed Mushroom
Okra-Maki
Chicken with g. onion
Chicken Meatball
Ginger Miso Beef
Chicken Wing
Friend had a similar one. Only difference was no stuffed mushroom but had scallop and shrimp.
Everything in the dinner course was good with only slight quibbles of underseasoning for some items such as the pork on the vegetable makis. The grilled charcoal flavor wasn't really evident to make up for the lack of seasoning. I liked my friends scallop and would want to get that next time. The shrimp was also underseasoned to my tastes but maybe I'm just not refined enough to appreciate the more subtle shrimp grilled flavor.
The chicken meatball had a nice grilled texture on the outside and soft and juicy on the inside. I tend to be picky about meatballs since the inside can be dried out while trying to get a nice crust on the outside. I was very happy with this. The ginger miso beef didn't have any ginger that I could taste but it was cooked to a med rare and tender.
Chicken wing had that nice crusty char to it and I was being barbaric gnawing on the bones.
The extras we got were the chicken addiction, ginger garlic tuna and skewer each of the chicken skin. I would go back solely for the chicken skin. Had that nice crispy crunch of good roasted skin but not burnt and juicy without being greasy.
I would pass on the chicken addiction. Boneless chicken meat coated in panko and fried. It was the definition of bad fried food. Dry meat inside, soggy greasy coating outside. Oil was probably not hot enough.
The ginger garlic item was wrapped in seaweed, lightly coated in tempura and fried. I didn't care for it but the other two liked it. I liked the texture but thought there was too much going on and nothing stood out.
I'd definitely go back and make this part of our rotation. Getting the ground chicken with the rice was almost too much and I eat a lot. Heck, I'd go back and just get a bowl of plain rice and several skewers of chicken skin for a light bite.
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luswei
Dec 4, 2007 07:40 PM
sakura house is one of my favorite restaurants! if only we lived closer! they bragg that their briquettes come from japan. we love the gingko nuts, okra maki, green bean maki, eggplant, stuffed mushroom, chicken wing, chicken liver, quail egg. they have lots of daily specials too. did the chef/grillmaster look like a surfer dude? often when we're there, the grillmaster is bare-chested under the japanese style robe top with his long hair in a pony tail.
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