Sakae Sushi – Eris Goes To

Sakae Sushi, IOI Mall

April 16, 2017Posted in FoodTagged dining, food, Japanese, Malaysia, Puchong, restaurant review, Sakae Sushi, sushiLeave a comment

Ah, it’s great to be back! Been feeling under the weather these past few days after travelling abroad, and then was busy catching up with work so I haven’t had time to update this space. Anyway, the Australia trip is embargoed until the story is published in the magazine, so it might be a couple of months before I can write about it here 😀

C asked me out to dinner at Sakae Sushi in IOI Mall Puchong. They moved out for awhile and the spot was taken over by another tenant, but have since returned. Sakae isn’t my favourite sushi chain coz their quality is inconsistent, but the other restos were full so we had this.

Cold marinated jellyfish and spicy snails. The jellyfish didn’t have as much bite as the one at Sushi King, but the flavour was alright.

Marinated snails was a bit tough to chew.

Mini salmon don

Been really enjoying cold cha soba (green tea buckwheat noodles) lately – you put the noodles into a cold soy-sauce broth and slurp it up in one bite. The version here is served with quail egg and Side of mixed tempura of shrimp, sweet potato, aubergine and green capsicum. The taste was decent, but have had better.

C’s set of tempura, sashimi (butterfish, salmon, tuna), miso soup, garlic rice, chawan mushi (steamed egg).

Quality wasn’t as good as the outlet in Mines Seri Kembangan. There are other Japanese restaurants that I’d rather go to in IOI Mall that aren’t as pricey too. 😛

SAKAE SUSHI

IOI Mall, Ground Floor, EG002, Puchong, 47100, Selangor

Round 2: Sakae Sushi @The Mines, Seri Kembangan

December 11, 2015December 11, 2015Posted in FoodTagged dining, eating, food, food review, Japanese, Malaysia, restaurant, Sakae Sushi, sushiLeave a comment

The good thing about going to a sushi restaurant is that there are many different kinds to try, so it never gets boring 🙂 And Sakae Sushi at The Mines, Seri Kembangan has become my place to have my Japanese food fix.

Brought C here for dinner before we went for the Big Bad Wolf Sales.

My favourite sushi item here was the Goma smoked duck. The chewy, tender bits of duck tasted more like bacon than poultry,and was wrapped in inari (beancurd) with a layer of rice underneath. The resulting flavours were a mix of savoury (from the duck), sweet (from the beancurd) and sour (from the vinegar), coupled with a creamy texture from the sesame dressing. D for Duck, D for Divine.

DO NOT get the Chicken Karaage from the belt. Order a freshly fried one from the tablet menu instead. Why? Because the one I lifted from the belt was cold, dry and tough from being left on the conveyer for too long. The taste wasn’t bad but it would have been much tastier hot.

River snail inari. Snails had a crunchy texture and the sauce had a spicy miso flavour.

Another one of my favourites was the ebi (shrimp), which was topped with a generous smattering of creamy mayo. The mayo had a smoky, peppery flavour which complimented the fresh, springy ebi and rice really well.

The Tempura Moriawase : Juicy, cooked-just-right fish, thin slices of eggplant that were crispy on the outside but soft on the inside, large and crunchy prawns, green pepper and long beans made up this platter of golden fried goodness. Despite being fried and crispy, the tempura did not leave that nasty, oily taste in the mouth.

To wrap up the meal, sweet mochi. This took forever to serve.. and I couldn’t find any rotating on the belt. They served it still hard so we had to wait a couple of minutes for it to become bouncy. They came in different flavours such as red bean (azuki) and sakura. Not too sweet, which is how I like it. 🙂

Sakae @ The Mines has earned a loyal customer for their affordable and yummy Japanese fare. You know how it is with chain restaurants; not every chain has the same quality. (The Sakae at 1Utama was horrible. I remember vomiting for three days after I ate some bad salmon… that was in 2009 and I never went back there again.)

Still, I’ll be popping in this branch every now and then. 🙂

SAKAE SUSHI (The Mines)

Lot L3-19B, Level 3, The Mines

Jalan Dulang, Mines Resort City

43300 Seri Kembangan

Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia

Opening hours: daily, 10am – 10pm

For my first review of Sakae, click here

Sakae Sushi, The Mines Seri Kembangan

October 17, 2015Posted in FoodTagged Asian, dining, eating, food, food review, Japanese, Malaysia, restaurant review, Sakae Sushi, sushi, The Mines1 Comment

My first experience with Sakae Sushi was at their outlet in 1Utama Shopping Mall, when I was still a college student in 2009. My (ex) boyfriend and I had some of their sashimi… and spent three days vomiting and puking our guts out from food poisoning. Although the manager there was very kind and offered us a complimentary voucher after my complaint, needless to say, I never went back there again.

Until recently.

It was the Awal Muharram holidays in Malaysia, but my colleagues and I were stuck at work. We decided to treat ourselves to a nice lunch at The Mines Shopping Center, and since they had some vouchers, we went to the Sakae Sushi there. The restaurant is hidden in a quiet corner on the 3rd floor.

Salmon sashimi. Some people might not like the idea of eating raw stuff, but I took to it like a fish to water (pardon the pun!). I like how the meat has a melt-in-the-mouth texture, and it’s especially good when dipped in soy sauce. The version here was fresh and thick-cut, with a nice layer of fat.

H’s eggy Chawan Mushi, topped with artificial ‘shark’s fin’ (it was actually vermicilli) and mushrooms.

Salmon piri-piri (fried skin). The batter almost tasted like KFC fried chicken! It was so addictive to munch on, we polished off two bowls.

Ebi(prawn) tempura sushi. Crunchy batter enveloped a springy shrimp on the inside, wrapped around with nori (seaweed) on a bed of firm, vinegar-infused Japanese rice. It was okay, but nothing special.

Soft-shell crab temaki. The crab sticking out of the roll looked limp and sad when it arrived, but tastewise, it was pretty good! The serving was also generous for the temaki; so many places put in a tiny piece of crab and yet still charge you exorbitant prices.

Tamago Inari, a sweet beancurd stuffed with sushi rice and topped with egg and mayonnaise. I found the beancurd to be too sugary, to the point that it overpowered the taste of egg.

One of my favourites of the afternoon was a new item on the menu, smoked duck sushi with sesame dressing. The dressing had that smooth, aromatic flavour of sesame oil, and the duck meat was so tender and chewy it felt like bacon. Double thumbs up!

We were craving for something sweet to end the meal, so we ended up ordering Warabi Mochi. While it was beautifully presented, the texture was hard and flour-like on the inside. There were two flavours – green tea and some sort of sweet caramel. The outside was dusted with sweet toasted soybean flour and drizzled over with honey. It wasn’t very tasty, as all I could taste was the sweetness from the honey and it felt like munching on a hardened sponge.

Overall, there were a couple of hits-and-misses, but the food quality is decent. I like how they provide iPads at each table so you simply have to press on them to place your order, aside from the usual sushi conveyor belt.