First visit to Sushi Ninja today for a quick late lunch.
I thought the restaurant was trendy cool with the Nina stars stuck to the walls, nice touch, I thought those were kinda cool.
When we arrived, it just so happened there was a small rush of people who came in behind us, I found that the waiting time for service was a bit slow, but understandable due to that little rush, considering at that moment, I only noticed 1 server working at the time.
The service was overall decent, the servers tend to push their specials, which to be quite honest with you doesn't go over too well for me, the specials are usually on a board somewhere, it's better for someone to let me know where it is than to tell me what they think I should order.
Anyways on to the food!
- wakame salad (seaweed salad): I love seaweed salad and in some cases not always available. The salad has ebiko and chopped octopus. A really good appetizer to get things going!
- kani salad (crab, mango, cucumber): Another nice starter to get things moving along. The salad I thought was well put together, one could argue there's a bit too much dressing, but I thought it was just fine :)
- salmon sushi: unfortunately, I didn't get to try this! My gf decided she could finish both of them for us! Hahaha.
- uni sushi: My first thought was the color is off, I hope it's not going to be terrible. I don't know really what to say as finding decent uni has been my biggest problem in the Philippines. It's certainly a hit or miss, but mostly a miss. Overall, it was average for Philippine restaurants that I have been to, below average when considering even just a run of the mill sushi joint in New York.
- anago (saltwater eel): A special on the board. Again I thought it was about average in both texture and flavor. Saltwater eel comes naked, no sauce, so typically a little bland to enjoy the natural flavor.
- oedo toshi: Wagyu atop a fried ball of rice. Interestingly enough, this is my first go at trying something like this. So first off, the Wagyu, don't expect a melt in your mouth experience, but the meat was tender enough and topped with a dab of wasabi dressing that complimented the dish well I would certainly give this dish another go next time.
- okinawa toshi: Torched salmon and cream cheese dresses with I think teriyaki sauce. Firstly, this dish was really pretty, aesthetically I thought the best of the dishes we had. However the fish I thought was really fishy tasting, overly so at times. The teriyaki sauce was a much non-necessary garnish to the dish but yet helped to somewhat mask the fishy taste.
- I cannot recall the name of the last dish: It was an off menu baked 1/2 steak of fish. Tender and tasty, I apologize I cannot recall the name. The cost was 695 in case you're interested you could probably ask the server and compare the price. I did enjoy this, I always ordered a grilled cheek back stateside when I go to a sushi joint to enjoy with my beer. This was tender and tasty, and went well with the Asahi beers I had.
Overall, decent, something different with the toshi, good salads, I will come by from time to time and try something different.
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