We really have a thing for Vietnamese food. We inadvertently find ourselves drawn to its yumminess. This set meal of sweet sour pork is our current lunch favorite, if we do get to eat out on a weekday which isn’t very often.
Apparently we’re not the only ones who love this set meal. The servers practically have to wheel them out by the medical cartload. What’s not to love, the fried wontons are yums too.
We heard that Mizu has a weekend Japanese lunch buffet and decided to give it a try. The place is cozy (read: small) with barely 3 spreads of food. I guess we’re used to seeing extensive buffet spreads at other restaurants. We started out with these fresh oysters, sushi and salmon sashimi (my favorite).
As we soon learnt, what’s not on the spread, you have to order from a buffet list and it will then be served to you. I’m not sure that’s how a buffet would work in the real sense of the word. Anyhow we were checking off the little boxes for tempura and teppanyaki fare.
The shrimp wasn’t fresh so we had to leave it.
The cawan mushi was on the order list and apparently tasted quite good.
The ice cream was good but as you can see, the single scoop is just one mouthful for the guys. We’re pretty sure we ordered more than this but I don’t think they all arrived.
For such a limited selection, it did not come cheap. With the buffet list, it’s all too easy to lose track of what you’ve ordered especially if you go in a large group, and it’s even easier to lose track of the orders that never arrived. We all agreed we got less than we ordered. So I guess it’s a case of “you lose”.
Considering that the restaurant was less than half full, service should’ve been much better. Instead we were constantly having to raise our hands for green tea refills, extra napkins and to ask what happened to our orders. We definitely prefer the buffets where everything is laid out and we get to help ourselves.
I enjoy me a good cup of green tea every now and then. When I’m eating out at a Japanese restaurant, green tea is, of course, the default drink. At home, I sometimes brew a pot so my kids can have a few sips though they aren’t really fond of it.
Green tea is supposedly very good for you. It works as a detox and antioxidant. It lowers your cholesterol level, burns fat and fighting off major diseases. It promises countless other health benefits as well, too many to name. Who knows, it may even work as a Hormone replacement therapy but don’t quote me on that.
I love all types of tea and drink them for their taste. If they come with health benefits, then that’s definitely a bonus, isn’t it?
Tempura is a hot favorite in our household and even more so now that I’ve started making it myself for our vegetarian days. With some miso soup to go with my yasai tempura (vegetable tempura), we’ve got an entire Japanese meal at home.
I’ve got my wasabi (green mustard), soy sauce and instant miso soup sachets in 3 flavors – tofu, seaweed and green onion.
The instant miso soup is so easy that I just need to add hot water and all those dried ingredients in the sachet instantly popped to life! The thing I love most is that it’s sodium-reduced too!
The tempura batter is easily whipped up in a large bowl with 1 cup flour, half cup cornflour, pinch of salt and pepper and icy cold water. I’m not one to measure ingredients to a T but these are just to give you an idea.
Mix everything together to a consistency thick enough to coat the veggies. I used sweet potatoes and broccoli here but you can use shrimp and any number of your favorite veggies. Deep fry till golden brown.
The dip is just some wasabi in a small dish with a drizzle of soy sauce stirred together. But be warned, will instantly send a powerful sting right up your nose. If you can get someone to capture that fiery moment on a digital camera casio, it will be priceless (just kidding 
).
And there you have it, yasai tempura and miso soup for the whole family without forking out the big bucks.
It’s Friday and it’s time to close my kitchen. As usual, we were trying to decide where to eat. Decisions, decisions. Lately Japanese has been the unanimous answer.
Whenever we do Japanese, we always order tempura. It was our first time at Sushi Zen in Midvalley. This is the ebi tempura (shrimp tempura) and yasai tempura (vegetable tempura) we had at Sushi Zen in Midvalley. I love the big shiitake mushroom tempura but the one made with enoki was pretty difficult to eat because of the long strands of enoki.
The unagi (eel) over rice was pretty good. When my youngest daughter is into her unagi, don’t bother asking her what does creatine do?, she’d be too busy savoring her favorite unagi.
