And the clan goes out!

The food blog, as promised. If you're on a diet, there are pictures of food in this blog post. :) You have been forewarned.

My dad loved Nagisa since the last time (which was also the first, btw) we went there. The buffet was nice with a reasonably varied spread, and the price wasn't too bad. The only downside is you may meet some very inconsiderate people who think nothing of taking all the salmon sashimi even when yours truly was standing behind them patiently waiting for her turn to attack the sashimi tray.

Best feature of the buffet: loads and loads of fat juicy strawberries! The last time I was there I had 3 dinner plates full of the stuff after my real dinner, and I would've went back for more if I could eat without throwing up. What can I say, I like strawberries. *shrugs*

Before I go off on another tangent, today's blog is not about Nagisa. The buffet was only available on weekends, and since ala carte the menu was very Japanese (ie, no pictures, just Japanese names and English descriptions. Bad English descriptions) we decided to go someplace else.

Someplace else being Zen in Sunway Pyramid.

It was a very pleasant change from Nagisa's atmosphere. I was listless and apathetic in Nagisa (after flipping through the menu), I was excited and hungry in Zen. First of all, the environment was contemporary, with none of that stiff Japanese etiquette you'd expect to find in a typical Japanese restaurant. Second of all, they didn't play Geisha music (with all that horrendous warbling the Japanese call 'singing').

A waiter tried to seat us in a circular table with a wind chill of 4 degrees Celsius because all other tables are apparently 'reserved', but there was no way anyone could've eaten in that vacuum. Seriously, the moment I sat down my top was fluttering, and it's not a loose top. :p Dad threatened to go to another restaurant when the captain came over and lead us to a table in a much more habitable climate, and all was well.

Because we are typical Malaysians, we cannot order food if there are no pictures for us to pick from. Unless, of course, we're eating in the local dai pai dong. Zen's menus are delightful, with HUGE pictures on every page. The lesson in catering to your customers must be learned here. Malaysians generally don't know a heck lot about Japanese food, other than Sashimi means raw fish, Sushi means raw fish with rice, and Wasabe is not to be taken by the spoonful. Malaysians also generally don't understand what akageno means. There's a high probability that I have mis-spelled that word, btw, which only serves to further illustrate my point.

The tactic to draw people in? Classy menus with nice big pictures of what I'm going to eat.

We had a very nice waitress who explained every detail about our orders to us. My grandmother was there with us and she's a strict vegetarian, so she painstakingly explained what the stock for the soup was made of and blablabla stuff like that so reassure my dad that it was safe to order the beancurd. I lost concentration after she mentioned beancurd, and spent my time examining the menu with my brother.

Now for the game of the hour: Challenge Saffy's Memory. Let's see how much I remember...

For starters, we had Sashimi salad, which was complimentary because it was a Thursday. It was drizzled over with some sort of red coloured sauce that was really savoury. Unfortunately, the sashimi were really small pieces, which made us think of the leftover parts when you're done slicing up the real stuff for the paying guests. Still, the salad was really good, and I deeply suspect it's because of the sauce.


Unfortunately we all dug in before I remembered to take a pic. This is what the salad looks like after the all 4 of us poked at it with our chopsticks. It looks much nicer when it came. :)

Dad also ordered soft-shelled crabs because we're all suckers for it. This time, I did manage to take a pic before the dish was attacked. It was nice and crunchy without too much oil, and they were generous with lemons. There's a little bowl of tempura soup-thingy that comes along with this dish, but I forgot to take a pic of it.




We also ordered a bowl of green peas, steamed and salted. I like green peas. :) This one is 2 ringgit more expensive than the Sushi King version, but it's heaps better.


My granma's vegetarian sushi. I can identify mushroom sushi and the beancurd sushi. The rest are really beyond me. She said it was good.

These pics didn't turn out so good, but they're still better than the pic of my dinner. On the left is a vegetarian miso soup which my granma raved about. On the right is two sticks of grilled shitake mushrooms that tasted a bit sourish and bitter. Not very nice.

Dad ordered some sorta beef rice, and I forgot what it's called in Japanese. His set had some fruits and Chawan Mushi. Unfortunately for him, he was the hungriest, and his set was the last to come. According to him, it was pretty good but the beef was a little too salty. No pics are available because I know better than to come between a hungry man and his dinner. Can you imagine what he would've done to me if I said, "Ba, wait wait, let me take a pic first!"

I'm not prescient, but I think it's pretty safe to go with "spillage of blood".

I ordered a BBQ Beef + Sushi dinner set, and it came with miso soup, Chawan Mushi, assorted fruits (papaya, honey dew and dragon fruit, all sweet), a small bowl of what appeared to be 2 pieces of brinjals soaked in soysauce (do not eat it) and some sort of pickled purple and yellow stuff. Unfortunately, the pic of the entire set didn't turn out at all, so here's what the beef looked like.


Could've eaten the beef with rice, as it was pretty tasty, but then there were also 8 pieces of sushi, so I decided to forgo the rice since I've had helpings from everyone's orders.

My brother ordered the Chicken + Sashimi set, and it came with basically the same side dishes as mine. Let's see...yeah, the same.


His chicken was tastier than mine, but then they were supposed to be eaten with his bowl of rice, so I guess it would've been overkill to make my beef as salty as his chicken was.


Sashimi was, and I quote, "Very nice. I like the way they shaved the ice to make a mini Sashimi ice-kacang." Fee-Fi-Fo-Fum, I smell a professional restaurant reviewer in the making, heheh. And no, he didn't go and eat the 'ice-kacang'.

My mom ordered a sharksfin/crabmeat soup that came in a small container that was really pretty. Unfortunately, they balled the sharksfin into 1 lump, so there were no strands of fin in the soup. My brother got the lucky spoonful. There was a lot of beancurd in the soup too. No pic is available because we were too busy eating.


Mom's main course is a spicy seafood soup that wasn't really that spicy to begin with. Maybe it was because I expected tom yam. :p They didn't skimp on the seafood, and my mom liked it very much, as evidenced by her almost draining the entire bowl, except for the pieces of salmon, which she gave to my dad. As you can probably guess, Mom is not really a gourmet, heheh.

While I was entertaining myself in the loo, my brother went and ordered a plate of salmon sashimi. It was a pretty good deal, priced at RM15 for 8 pieces. That comes to less than 2 Ringgit per piece. Do me a favour and stop going to Sushi King for stale Sashimi. Hit Zen instead.

According to my brother, the presentation for the salmon sashimi was the best of the night. Unfortunately, he didn't take a pic of it because we had completely forgotten about the existence of the camera at this point, until it was time to leave. It's a good thing we didn't leave it behind, heheh, or this would've been one boring blog.

Finally, to finish this post off, here's a pic of the view from where I was sitting.


This is the best I could do under the circumstances. I'm too repressed to be able to stand up and take a pic of my surrounding area without feeling self-conscious. :p Circular thingies on the ceiling are the lights, circular thingies on the ground are the tables with comfy wraparound couches. The third circular couch from my mom's pixelated head is the table with the extreme wind chill effect.

Notes
dai pai dong: roadside stall, usually dirty and unhygienic, but with really good food. What's a little food poisoning once in a while? ;p

Pics were alternately taken by both my brother and myself. Blurry sashimi pic belongs to him. The small, bad pics are mine.

Zen's website. It might be prudent to book your seats in advance, cos we went on a Thursday and the place was completely packed by the time it was 8pm. They serve buffets on Sundays at RM49++ per person, if I'm not mistaken.