Sakai Restaurant

Ratings

Rating breakdown

Hours: Not verified yet

Dinner two weekends in a row at Sakai Japanese and Korean restaurant. As I've mentioned previously, I always have been curious about their Korean dishes, but their sushi is just too good to be there and not eat. Saturday night I finally gave in as I saw pictures of this soup I just had to try before it starts to warm up outside (is it ever going to?). I was pretty sure of what it was, but wanted to make sure I ordered the right thing so I showed our waitress (I always forget to mention how friendly all the staff are there. And love that they yell "Irasshaimase!" ((welcome)) when you walk in) a picture of what I was looking for, and she said it was Soon Du Bu. Alright, I'll take one of those along with an order of their Monkfish sushi. The wife went with their sushi dinner and wanted to add some toro but they were out but did have Toro something or other as a special which she did instead which was quite good. Nice and buttery. The monkfish was delicious. Not many places offer it so I always make sure to get it when I'm somewhere that does (although I did forget last week!). The soup, when it came out nice and bubbling piping hot I had high hopes. I was a bit concerned when the waitress dropped off a little bowl which she said was for the bones. I should also mention the banchan (little Korean side dishes - theirs were kimchi, some pickled cucumbers and some type of sprout) which were quite tasty. I realized after I probably should have eaten them with the rice they dropped off. The flavors were nice (although man it was HOT and took a while to cool down, another waitress actually brought me out a small bowl to put stuff in to eat out of until the main bowl cooled a bit). Nice big chunks of tofu, along with some vegetables including a fair amount of jalapenos. The broth had a bit of a kick to it, but nothing overpowering, although my nose was running a bit. The bones in the fish however did get to be a bit much after a while. Most of them were pretty easy to pull out whole, but I did keep running in to small unseen ones I kept having to pull out of my mouth which after a while got old. I won't go with this particular soup again, but they have some others I'll definitely try, along with some of their other Korean dishes, along with at least a side of sushi to get my fix.