A buffet worth coming back to.

The idea of wolfing down obscenely huge amounts of good Japanese food might certainly go against the very essence of everything Japanese.

But the immensely popular Hanabi Japanese food buffet is anything but not Japanese – you get to choose from some 80 over dishes ranging from platters of very fresh sashimi to yakitori and tempura dishes.

The ala carte buffet menu certainly requires some self-discipline to control, but the key here is pacing yourself and really, just appreciating the freshness of the food. The bane of buffetees everywhere, you can be assured this buffet is no chop shop conveyor belt.

Perhaps a testament to the restaurant’s true skill is simple dishes like it’s fried on the grill beansprouts, so basic it takes great skill to make it taste just right – that it’s touched the grill for just the right amount of time.  It’s attention to even dishes like that that makes one appreciate the restaurant’s skill.

The sashimi platters here are very fresh, with a wide range of raw meat from swordfish to raw sweet shrimp on one platter, while other more ubiquitous dishes such as fried rice come fried with unagi or other delights, and fried authentically on the grill, not in a pan.

Thankfully the restaurant isn’t gigantic, and is a typical medium sized establishment not unlike those you will find in Japan itself, and its décor may belie some thought to the land of the rising sun, but that’s it. You really come here for the food.

The down side of that of course is that you can rarely walk in to the restaurant unless you’re a group of well… two. Reservations for this popular place is highly, highly recommended to avoid disappointment. - david