Review: Haiku Sushi & Seafood Buffet @ Redmond, WA

Store: Haiku Sushi & Seafood Buffet
Location: 7548 164th Ave NE, Redmond WA

Price (Dinner Buffet) weekend: $24.95
Price (Lunch Buffet) weekend: $18.95
* They have discounts for birthday celebration, senior and certain employees! (Check their website for details)

As mentioned in my previous post, we went to buffet... Daniel said this after dinner "Go to Haiku, equals suicide"... lol...  you can tell we ate too much!!!

I always have these questions in my head when going to buffet:
1. Do people go on diet prior to buffet?
2. How much does buffet owner earn?
3. How full do people eat from buffet?  80%? 100%? 110%?

For us, we may make the mistake on eating too much that night, when we got up from our chairs, we almost can't walk. When we were on the ride home, I just hope it was a smooth ride. Afterwards, we need to rest at home for about an hour in order to get back to normal.  Never had this experience before, guess we were getting old??

The meal was delicious though, this just proves that if we want sashimi or rolls, it's much more worth it if we eat at buffet, just make sure we don't eat way beyond our means!

So here are the things I picked from the buffet table.  (Note: This is only my portion and I finished them all)  Daniel had his too, but he didn't plate it as nice as me.  :)

First, I started off with some sushi and sashimi, I didn't know the sashimi were at the end; otherwise, I will get less rolls.  There were at least 10 types of sushi roll to choose from and I was picky on my selections.  The scallop you see at the top was raw!  It's delicious but the stock was low. When I asked Daniel why you didn't pick one up, he said where... oops.. he didn't see it.  So we kept going back to the sashimi section and looked for it, we at least went back there 3 times, and he was able to get it once.  And when I went right after him, it's already all gone.  Daniel clearly saw them having more, but they didn't place them out :S  I think those scallops were expensive, maybe that's why??  My favorite on this plate is the spicy tuna sashimi, guess they were mixed with the non-spicy ones on the top left corner.

After the sashimi, I started to get some hot food.  One of the noticeable item is the raw oyster... I am not really a fan of raw oyster but I usually get one to try.  This one really surprise me, there's no fishy smell or taste at all and this thing was huge!  Guess you can tell from the picture.  Another of my favorite is the top scallop shell, it's cream sauce with lots of tiny scallops, that was pretty good.

After all the cold food, I had some hot seafood,  I had calms, oysters, lobsters and soft crabs.  They had cold snow crab too, but I didn't pick any... I did't really want to eat any seafood from shells but I could handle these lobster pieces without using my hands touching them.  We also had some soups and noodles, including miso soup, udon and sweet and sour soup.  The one on the picture was their special soup, which was seafood with radish soup.

Finally, it's dessert time, they don't have a lot of cakes, maybe 4-5 to choose from, but all of them were cut tiny, like the cheesecake in this picture.  The desserts in this buffet were just soso... The ice cream flavors on the picture were vanilla, butter pecan and green tea.  The green tea flavor wasn't very green tea, ok... maybe I had high expectations, it's very similar to the Haagen Dazs green tea.  I like the butter pecan most, it's basically vanilla with pecans.  They also serve creme brûlée.  The sugar coating was good, but the pudding was a bit thick for me.

In general, you can tell I really enjoy my meal here.  I love their environment too, it's the clean and modern look I like.  Also, I may recommend dinner over lunch as they serve more seafoods during dinner.  If I recall, I don't think they serve sashimi during lunch as well.


Food: 5/5
Price: $$
Environment: 5/5
Recommend to friends? Yes, but I will only recommend if you are hungry.  If you are not very hungry, maybe better to head to Oto Sushi.

Review: Belle Pastry @ Redmond, WA

Store: Belle Pastry
Location: 8918 161st Ave NE, WA 98052

Belle Pastry has 2 locations, their original location is at downtown Bellevue, the one I went was in Redmond.  I haven't been to the Bellevue location, so can't compare their quality.  All I know is their Redmond location has a lot of desserts!!  They have at least 5 tables and have plenty of enough room for people to have a coffee or enjoy some desserts.

Daniel and I went there for a light breakfast because we were planning having an empty stomach for buffet, I will write the review for that later.

We had croissant, chocolate croissant and macaron.  Sorry, the chocolate croissant is not in the picture, guess Daniel just finished it without taking the pic.. :S  The croissant is fluffy, had a good texture, I just wish it was warmed when it's served though.  The macaron is a good deal, $1 each, it's actually pretty cheap... I remember paying more than $2 for something like that in Toronto easily.  They also sold the macarons in a bag, but they are pretty much the same price, so I suggest buying individual macarons instead.  My favorite flavor is the orange, it's very refreshing.  The biscuit is very fragile and it's best to eat it with one bite.  The filling inside has the right texture too.  I forgot what's the flavor in the yellow one, but it's not lemon and it's chocolate inside.

Food: 4.5/5
Price: $ (This is cheap but for the type of food you are paying, it's pretty expensive)
Environment: 4/5
Recommend to friends: Yes

Review: Oto Sushi @ Redmond, WA

Store: Oto Sushi
Location: 8015 161st Ave NE, Redmond WA

This week was Japanese food centric, guess we can't handle the spice anymore!  Umm, or maybe not... will show you in the next post.

Oto Sushi is an authentic Japanese restaurant and it looks big.  The restaurant uses a lot of wood as decor and had a Japanese feel to it.  They also had a Japanese bar if anyone is interested to watch the sushi chef make sushi. Depending on what you order and how much food you order, this can be more expensive than a Japanese buffet.  So if you are really hungry, you may want to go across the street and have Haiku buffet instead.  Otherwise, Oto seems to serve decent food.

Here are the items we had:
1. Edamame (complimentary)
They placed this after we ordered.  Nice gesture of them.  Normally, this may cost anywhere from $3-5.

Edamame

2. Music Roll ($12.95)
Sushi with lightly cooked salmon on the outside, avocado and tempera shrimp in the side.  Not quite sure what's the sauce on the plate, but it made the sushi quite wet, so I didn't prefer it, or I shouldn't  dip the sushi into the soy sauce.  I was just ok with this roll.

Music Roll

3. Yakitori ($5.95)
Very flavorful teriyaki chicken on a skew. I don't see this dish often so ordered this.  Not bad, it's a nice change from gyoza :)

Yakitori

4. Ton-Katsu ($12.95)
Not sure if the best was saved for last, or we didn't order the right things.  I liked Ton-Katsu the most.  Ok, before the dish came, I thought it was the other don, i.e. the one with onion and egg... sorry, wrong.. didn't read the menu properly.  I still love this dish though, and the salad on the side was quite good, it's simple and the salad dressing was light.

Ton-Katsu

Overall, I like the plate presentation of Oto Sushi, that seems to impress me.


Food: 4/5 (a bit disappoint with the music roll, will try something else next time)
Price: $$
Environment: 5/5
Recommend to friends? Yes

Review: Spicy Talk Bistro @ Redmond, WA

Store: Spicy Talk Bistro 麻辣誘惑
Location: 16650 Redmond Way, Redmond WA

As recommended by some of our friends, Spicy Talk Bistro is an authentic Chinese restaurant.  We decided to give it a try.

Here are the dishes we tried:

1. Szechuan Crispy Tofu ($10.95)
The tofu was very crispy with a hint of spiciness.  This is my favorite out of the other dishes.  They also serve some green beans in the dish.  I want to say this is a healthy dish as there's tofu, but it's fried, so not sure if I can say that anymore :)

Szechuan Crispy Tofu

2. Sizzling Beef ($12.95)
We loved this dish, and it's best to eat it when they first serve it!!! i.e. sizzling!!!  This dish smells so good!  Guess it's because of all the onions on the dish... I was wondering how can I make those mushrooms... and what mushroom is it.  I bought different types of mushroom from 99 Ranch this weekend and will do some experiments.

Sizzling Beef

3. Special Chow Mein ($9.25)
Special chow mien means there's shrimps, chicken and beef.  I just added the sizzling beef on my noodles so I get more beef!  This dish is spicy but not as spicy as the tofu.  I don't really prefer thick noodles, but that's a personal preference.  Otherwise, I believe Daniel really enjoy this dish.

Special Chow Mein

In general, the portions served by Spicy Talk were big, so even the price maybe higher than some other Chinese restaurants, their quantity was generous.  The inside of the bistro was a very typical Chinese restaurant look, they also had lots of lanterns hanging, guess those were from Chinese New Year?  The parking outside the bistro maybe hectic though, we were lucky to find the last available parking slot in the plaza on Friday night.  A worthy mention is the exact Chinese translation for the restaurant name is "spicy temptation".  I just find the word temptation interesting, and because of this fact, it made me wanting to try this place when I drove by previously.

Food: 4.5/5
Price: $$
Environment: 4/5
Recommend to friends? Yes

Review: Stone Korean Restaurant @ Redmond, WA

Store: Stone Korean Restaurant
Address: 16857 Redmond Way, Redmond, WA

If you don't already notice, Daniel and I normally crave for Asian food because we miss the selections we get in Toronto!!!

We had some decent Korean food at Stone Korean Restaurant.  Notice, this isn't Stone House, which is a restaurant that's rated pretty high in Yelp.  We may want to try that one day too.  Stone Korean Restaurant was ran by Korean, the food is authentic.  According to Yelp, their price is on the pricer side.  I really can't comment as this is our second time dining at a Korean restaurant in Redmond and their price wasn't online so I took a picture of each page of the menu and will compare later.

Here are the dishes we ordered:

1. Beef Tofu Soup ($10)

As usual, we ordered spicy... ok.. maybe not next time.. as Daniel couldn't handle the spiciness of this dish... this was probably the max. he can handle.. oops... I have to say their soup was pretty good though, it's spicy and thick.  It's not watery as some of the other Korean restaurant served.   There weren't a lot of beef but I think that's pretty normal for this dish.  One worthy mention is the rice!!! I believe they cooked the rice in that stone bowl they served.  There weren't a lot of rice, and when it's done, you saw the dried rice at the bottom and it's hard to take out.  I can't wait to try their bibimbob, I think that will be good as the rice on the side will be crispy... I remember I had a similar experience in Japan and couldn't find it anywhere else, maybe I can find that in Redmond?

Beef tofu soup

2. 1/2 Fried and 1/2 Marinated Chicken (12 pieces) ($22)

We really want to try fried chicken because people in New York City were craving for these. At the time, Daniel and I were tourist in New York's Korean town and someone came to us and asked where's the best Korean fried chicken.  We were liked... what's Korean fried chicken.  Since then, we were curious about Korean fried chicken.  When we saw fried chicken on the Stone Korean Restaurant menu, we didn't hesitate to order.  They have 2 options a) wings b) whole chicken.  They don't offer marinated wings, so we decided to go with half half on the whole chicken.  The fried chicken were similar to KFC, maybe less greasy and definitely crispy, similar to Popeyes. The marinated chicken was sweet, like honey with green onion.  We liked the dishes but that's a lot of chicken for both of us.  It's better if we were having this with a group!

Korean fried & marinated chicken

Price: $$
Food: 4.5/5
Environment: 4/5
Recommend to friends: Yes

Tips: 
The restaurant was clean; however, the floor was slippery.  I was wearing hunter boots and still, I slipped.  I believe I wasn't the only one, while we were eating, we saw at least one more person who slipped.  So be careful when you walk into the restaurant!!!

Review: Canyon's Restaurant @ Redmond, WA

Store: Canyon's Restaurant
Location: 15740 Redmond Way, Redmond, WA

Over the weekend, we were doing grocery shopping in the Canyon's Restaurant's plaza, and decided to have dinner at Canyon's.  We discovered Ben Franklin Crafts and Frames in the plaza, it's a heaven there, they look more organized than Michael's and have a stamping booth where you buy your own paper and you can use their stamp to shape your paper, i.e. flags, shopping bags, etc... pretty cool.  Will definitely come back if we want to decorate our home later.

Back to Canyon's, it's an American restaurant, i.e. where you get burgers and fries.  Also, they have a good selections of Mexican food.  The restaurant is roomy and has lots of tv, not sure if it's because we were sitting near the bar area.  Their service on the other hand will be where the marks got deducted:
a) The menu they provided me had a few drops of water on it. :S
b) Their fries were unlimited but my glass of water was empty for awhile and they didn't notice.
c) When ordering chicken enchiladas, the waitress asked us whether we want guacamole, we said yes but we didn't know they were going to charge $0.99!!  And later we found out that the dish already has avocado; if we knew this, we probably won't bother with the guacamole.

Their food is decent though, here are the dishes we tried:
1. Chicken Enchiladas ($14 + $0.99 for guacamole)
Nice presentation, decent amount of meat. Good food.

2. Crispy Fish Burger ($10)
Normally, I wouldn't order burger but I was craving for a St. Lawrence Market fish sandwich and so decided to go with this.  The fish was crispy and we loved their fries because of its spiciness.  We also ordered an extra plate of fries as it's bottomless! However, the sandwich here is not as good as the ones in St. Lawrence market, guess I had high expectations when ordering, if not, I should have gave this a higher score.

Price: $$
Taste: 3.5/5
Environment: 3/5
Recommend for friends: Maybe?  If you are a sports person and there's a game playing that day.  Or if you have discounts, this restaurant will be a good deal.

Tips:

1. One big reason we will go back is Daniel gets discount when dining here, buy one entree get one free!!  How can we go wrong with that?!?! We paid $20 for these two entrees including tax and tips!  

2. When they offer you add-ons, check if there's extra charge.