No. 6, Senlin 1st Rd, Xinxing Dist
高雄市新興區林森一路6號
(07)261-7999
Monday, Wednesday-Sunday
11:00am-2:00pm
5:00pm-9:00pm
English friendly: no
vegetarian friendly: no
average cost: 150-200NTD
Apparently the servers at this Japanese lunch place are forced to shout words in Japanese whenever anyone opens the door. It's so sweet. The poor things don't even get tips.
This place serves Japanese rice bowls (丼), curry, and ramen, except they are no longer serving ramen. But no worries: you are only here for the side dishes. Specifically, the tofu side dish. It will make its appearance in a second...
...But first, the bowl of complimentary kimchi! Nothing much to say here, except: it was GOOD. Slightly sweet, which surprised me, with a respectable spicy kick at the end, which really surprised me.
I guess their fried tofu side dish is somewhat famous, among some people. As it should be! It was absolutely absolutely absolutely delicious; I wish I'd ordered like four more of them. The tofu was super soft and slippery, with that slightly salty eggish flavor, and the breading had been fried to a perfect level of crispy flaky deliciousness. Yum!
If you can get a piece from the bowl to your mouth without extra-soft tofu bursting out all over the place, you have achieved maximum level chopstick mastery.
I would normally not mention the obligatory cup of miso soup, but I think there was something slightly off about this one... A weird, unpleasant sort of taste. It might have had green pepper in it? Or something? I spent a long time trying to figure it out but have come to no conclusions. Be warned.
This is probably the trademark dish of this restaurant: the "Victory Rice Bowl", or 勝丼. I really like the character 丼 because it looks like a 井 ("well") with some stuff in it, and your typical 丼 is really just a fancified bucket of food. In this case, the rice at the bottom of the bucket has been topped with generous amounts of breaded chicken, onions, cooked egg, and raw egg. Apparently you're not supposed to wait for the egg to cook or anything; you just sort of mix all that junk into the rice with your spoon and have a go at it.
The chicken was good, as any chicken would be with that much batter fried onto it.
I personally ordered the BIG SHRIMP FOODBUCKET, which came with two big shrimp all breaded up and lookin' at me. Apparently you're supposed to eat them shell, legs, little pleading eyes and all, though I personally drew the line at their heads. Ahem. The rest of them was certainly nice and crispy though. It would be crispy, wouldn't it? Tempura shrimp shell?
My 丼 gets extra points for having lots of really well-cooked onions. The egg and whatever else might have been in it (I couldn't really tell) was also good, or at least not offensive. And yet the rice itself was only so-so. Pretty unfortunate, because the whole meal sort of depended on it. It meant that nothing about this 丼 really screamed "awesome" to me, not like those tofu bits did.
In conclusion I would say that, while I enjoyed this lunch experience, it was nothing TOO special. Still, it could have been much worse! Tofu connoisseurs are encouraged to stop by and check it out.
OVERALL RATING: 3/5
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