In January this year, I attended my company’s annual dinner and I was lucky enough to land my hands on some dining vouchers at PJ Hilton. After some casual research done with the help of the oh-so-informative internet, I finally decided to go for a Japanese buffet with my man at Genji Japanese Restaurant at the hotel.
We made earlier reservation and on a Sunday, we went over to start our relaxed and slow paced buffet lunch. The variety of food was ok but I didn’t really eat much coz I felt full that very day. The price for buffet lunch is at RM89++ and for buffet dinner, it’s at RM99++.
The buffet spread was 80% Japanese cuisine and the remaining was western. You name it; they most likely will have it. I had my fair share of sashimi and fresh oyster to start off. Followed by grilled unagi, tempura, sushi, baby octopus, tepenyaki, steamed egg, and last of all, ice cream for dessert.
The sashimi is fresh, but they sliced it a little weird, it’s a little small sized compared to the normal salmon shashimi which other places served. Overall, the sashimi is fine. The butterfish sashimi was also delicious, the plus point of Genji was, they had sweet teriyaki sauce available, so for those who don’t really like the normal shoyu salty sauce, you can opt for the sweet sauce instead.
The oysters were fresh, but I didn’t eat much of it. Lots of people lining up just to get themselves sufficient portions of fresh oysters, by the time its my turn to pick, it’s either all gone or only those thin and shrank sizes of oysters left.
The steamed egg (a.k.a. chawanmushi) was nothing great, it was too hard, most likely, they steamed it too long and made the whole thing hard. Of course, not rock hard, but to me, my perception and expectations of chawanmushi must be wobbly enough when scooped but, at Genji, it wasn’t wobbly, it was firm…
There were varieties of sushi and hand rolls, didn’t wanted to invest my stomach on those coz its rice, if I eat those, then I wont have enough space to try out other stuff. Sushi that day are fine, however, the salmon was very thinly sliced for the salmon sushi, so, rather go for sashimi instead.
Next was the tempura stop, they have a variety of vegetables and prawn tempura. It was a hit that day, the chefs cant even cook it on time, and everyone was already lining up to fill their plates with prawn tempura. I managed to get only 4, so my man and I each had 2. we didn’t want to join the crowd, so we just watched the people in line waiting anxiously for the tempura to be scooped out from the pan.
We tried out the tepenyaki, we were given an option to choose our ingredients to be tepenyaki-ed, so my man chose squid and beef. The squid turned out to me a little rubbery and the beef a bit too stiff. Lucky we didn’t pick much for the chef to fry and we managed to finish up our portion we ordered.
And finally, we ended our buffet with mocha ice cream, of course, there were other flavors but I only went for green tea ice cream. I had a satisfying amount of ice cream before we called for the bill.
Once again, pictures tell a thousand words… here you go…
