Kidari, wow. Your happy hour special is a little too good to be true. But it was true, which is why we specifically chose to go here during happy hour (4:30-6:30 pm on weekdays) because a good chunk of the menu is half off. In addition, Kidari is a BYO, so we had a plentiful supply of beer and sake to accompany us throughout the meal. All of these components, plus a group of friends old and new, made for a really enjoyable experience.
 |
extensive menu, which can also be
used to roll sushi! |
The interior of the restaurant is fairly small, but decorated exactly how I expect a city sushi joint to be decorated - sleek with (obviously) Asian influence. The menus were mounted on sushi rolling mats, which I thought was a cute touch. The waitstaff was very friendly and didn't mind that our group of 6 wasn't all there at the same time, and patient with us when we waited a bit to order. I always feel a little guilty making waitstaff wait or asking for special accommodations, having worked in restaurants for the better part of my high school and early college years and seeing my fair share of asshole customers. Of course, we here at S and S are always courteous and do our best not to annoy the fuck out of the restaurants we visit, but I am always overly conscientious of our behavior. Guess that's a side effect of being in the scientific community.
 |
| Sleek asian decor |
|
 |
| Little green vehicles for salt |
|
 |
| fried gyoza dumplings |
|
As for the food, I was overall pleased. I found most dishes to be flavorful, and I was sufficiently full by the end. Again, because the happy hour special was so wallet friendly, we were able to order a lot of food. We ended up going for a good majority of the sushi rolls offered for happy hour: inari & carrot, veggie tempura with avocado, sweet potato tempura, spicy veggie, cy-tuna, cy-salmon, eel & cucumber, and one named miss crunch, which had crab and shrimp.... in addition, we also ordered: pork gyoza, edamame, fried tofu and the veggie spring rolls. So yeah, we definitely sampled a good portion of the menu.
 |
| lots of sushi rolls |
I often judge sushi joints based on their edamame and sweet potato tempura rolls. Probably the two most American-style dishes you can get on the menu, but I have been to Japan so I can at least make the case that I've had amazing traditional Japanese food and I do in fact know what I'm missing. For the edamame, I was very happy with the dish. The soy beans tasted fresh and had that nice sort of creamy taste to them, and the pods were well salted, a must in my book because I love salt. The sweet potato tempura sushi I was less enthused about. The tempura-ness of it (i.e. the delicious fried crunchiness) was done well, but the sweet potato itself was only so-so. Kind of bland in my book. So a 1/2 in that category. But I certainly had rolls that I really enjoyed (see: veggie tempura, salmon), and the pork gyoza were fried to perfection. I did not partake in the miss crunch or eel rolls, because I am not a huge fan of seafood save a few types of fish. You may wonder, "Sam, you are from Cape Cod, full of annoying tourists, the location of the Kennedy compound, former residence of Taylor Swift and a plentiful haven of all types of seafood, what is wrong with you?" I'm sorry, I don't really have a great answer for you. So let's pretend I had a traumatic childhood experience involving something akin to a Sharknado and leave it at that.
As far as I remember, the happy hour specials were only for the summer months, but the waitress mentioned that their
facebook page would reveal the next round of deals, and that they'd probably be pretty similar. So, if you are looking for tasty, filling sushi and a great happy hour deal, I definitely recommend Kidari.
No comments:
Post a Comment