Sherman's Food Adventures: AYCE
Showing posts with label AYCE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AYCE. Show all posts

Sumo All You Can Eat (Kent)

So you've heard me talk about the comeback or revival of AYCE (All-You-Can-Eat) in the past few years right?  Well, there are a few reasons for that, but the biggest is to do with the prevailing shape of the economy.  People just want good value when they go out to eat.  Hence, restaurants are adapting to consumer behavior.  More often than not, these AYCE spots will be Asian (in particular, Japanese, Indian and Chinese Hot Pot).  So that has brought us to Sumo All-You-Can-Eat in Kent.  Unlike many other AYCE Japanese joints, Sumo has some pretty good reviews.


To order food, you scan the QR code and then select items off your phone.  Dishes are brought to you by robots, so in reality, you could have very little interaction with the staff.  We started off with some smaller dishes in the Sushi Bomb, Tuna Tataki and Yellowtail Jalapenoa.  On a cube of crispy rice, the Sushi Bombs featured spicy salmon on top.  This was a crispy bite that wasn't as heavy as it looked.  As for the Tuna Tataki, it was somewhat spicy due to the dusting of togarashi on the outside.  The Yellowtail was buttery and had a kick from the jalapeno and spicy sauce.


They also have some torched sushi on the menu as well, so we got the Aburi Salmon Nigiri as well as the Aburi Scallops.  I gotta say that these were fantastic, especially for AYCE.  The salmon was buttery and the sushi rice was quite decent being chewy and not dry.  The scallops were buttery and fresh (and we weren't forced to eat any rice with it!).  We got a selection of their sushi rolls including the Rainbow, Dragon, Pink Lady and Sweet Heart Rolls.  They were neatly-constructed and that was surprising for AYCE.  In the end, they were also quite good where the rice was just right and the amount of components exceeded the amount of rice.  I especially enjoyed the heart-shaped Sweet Heart Roll since it was wrapped in soy paper, which made it easy to eat.  The spiced imitation crab filling tasted great too.

Moving onto some fried appies, we had the Chicken Karaage, Tempura Shrimp, Coconut Shrimp and Fried Oysters.  The Chicken Karaage was okay, maybe a little dry, but crispy.  The Tempura Shrimp was a bit overbattered, but the shrimp was buttery.  Oysters were crunchy on the outside and buttery soft with brininess inside.  The star of the show was the Coconut Shrimp as there was a crunchy breading while the shrimp had a moist snap.

Our next set of dishes including Seaweed Salad, Imitation Crab Salad, Takoyaki, Nigiri and Unagi Don.  Strangely, I really enjoyed the crab salad even though it was drenched in kewpie mayo.  The crunch from the veggies did add texture.  As you can see, the Nigiri was pretty legit looking and it also ate well with a proper fish-to-rice ratio.  The Unagi Don was serviceable with buttery pieces atop chewy rice.  Takoyaki and seaweed salad were typical and decent.

In addition to ordering from your phone, there is a small section with serve-yourself dishes including Sesame Glutinous Balls, Calamari, Spring Rolls, Korean Spicy Wings, Edamame Salad, Jellyfish Salad, Bamboo Shoot Salad, Shrimp and a host of fruit and small cake desserts.  Of note, the Salads were actually quite good and well-seasoned.  Nice texture on them too.  Wings were okay, but a bit dry.  There was also Miso Soup in this section too.


Normally, AYCE restaurants serve crappy Ramen.  But believe it or not, the one at Sumo was passable.  Sure, the broth wasn't really that great, but the rest of it was.  The noodles were al dente while the chashu was buttery and torched.  It has legit soft eggs, scallion, wood ear, fried garlic and nori.  Also, the selection of Sashimi was decent as well.  Fish quality was acceptable and you can order as much as you want from a variety that included red tuna, tuna, tamago, ebi, tako, unagi, hokkigai and amaebi.


So far, the meal was great and I wasn't even taking into account that it was AYCE.  However, nothing is ever perfect and the cooked meats were a bit hit and miss.  Although the Grilled Beef looked fantastic, it was actually quite chewy.  The same could be said about the Grilled New York Steak.  Although prepared nicely medium, it was also not tender.  Both were seared well and had good flavor though.  As for the Beef Short Ribs, they were the best of the bunch, being fairly tender for non-tenderized short rib.  Once again, good sear and properly seasoned.

To end the meal, we had the aforementioned sliced fruit and sheet cakes in the self-serve station, but there was also a freezer near the front entrance.  In it, we found various Popsicles and Ice Cream Cups.  Nothing amazing, but satisfying and refreshing after a filling meal.  In fact, if you wanted to take it to go instead of eating it, you could do so!  Considering the quality and variety of food on the menu, the AYCE at Sumo has to be one of the better ones I've had in recent memory.  Of course we always need to have reasonable expectations for AYCE, but even with that, most of the food was "regular menu" quality (except for the grilled meats).  In that case, I do recommend you try this if you are hangry and don't want to sacrifice all the quality for quantity.

*All food and beverages were complimentary for this blog post*

The Good:
- Reasonably-priced
- AYCE menu is extensive
- Overall food quality is good

The Bad:
- Avoid the grilled meats
- Was funny watching the robots get stuck sometimes

Liuyishou (Burnaby)

Here I am again at Liuyishou in Burnaby.  This time around, I am trying out their AYCE menu for $39.99 per person.  That also includes one soup base for the table.  Currently, they are running a Halloween special where if you are a party of 4 and dressed in a costumes, you get one AYCE meal for free!  That effectively is 25% off.  So make sure you can round up 3 friends or family members!  This is only available on Oct 31st.  Remember though, since this is a Halloween special, you must dress up!  Also, if you say "trick or treat",  they will send out a free special dessert (available Oct 28th - Oct 31st).


Since I've been here so many times, it was nice to see some subtle changes.  Over at the Sauce Bar, they now have a refrigerated serving tray that features 5 different small dishes.  These include Mouth-Watering Chicken, Marinated Pig's Ear, Sliced Pig's Feet, Tofu Skin and Seaweed Salad.  All are very good and kept cold by the cooling trays.  The sauce portion of the station remains quite the same but there are now sliding sneeze guards.  Nice to keep things sanitary!


There is also a small selection of Hot Food that included Fried Mantou, Fried Chicken and Fried Egg Rice.  These are not merely throw-ins or for show, they are actually good.  The chicken is super juicy and the batter is crispy and light.  Fried rice is a bit greasy, yet is chewy and flavourful.  Adjacent, there are some DIY Grass Jelly dessert as well as some cantaloupe and orange slices.  The fruit is actually quite good being sweet and juicy.

Another welcome change is the serve-yourself Hot Pot Bar.  It consists of various noodles, vegetables, bean curd things, fish balls and tofu.  Obviously, this is added due to the introduction of AYCE.  This makes things easier for the staff as these items are easy enough for people to get themselves.  I personally like it since these are some of the items I like most and I could help myself to as many quail's eggs, bean curd sticks, corn and noodles to my heart's content!

For our visit, we ordered a good selection of what is available on the AYCE menu including the popular Beef & Lamb Ring.  Very cool to look at, but beware, you need to cook that meat fairly quickly or it will cook on the board.  Love that their Meatballs are freshly made including the beef and shrimp.  Another must is the Sliced Snakehead Fish.  Super buttery and moist.  One of the extra charge dishes is the Peppercorn Beef Tongue.  It is so tender and buttery.  Worth the $9.95.  Also worth the extra $4.95 is the Brown Sugar Sticky Rice Cakes.  Crispy on the outside with a soft chewiness inside.  The brown sugar is so sweet and rich.

On the topic of sweet, the free dessert that is part of the Trick or Treat promotion is the Deep Fried Yam Balls.  These are also delicious where the outside is lightly crunchy while the inside is soft with a chew.  These are sweet but not too much.  A nice little bite to end the meal.  So you might already know that I love Liuyishou and now that they have AYCE, it is even a better deal.  But try to take advantage of their Halloween special.  Remember to dress up!

*All food and beverages were complimentary for this blog post*

The Good:
- Affordable pricing for the AYCE
- Food quality for AYCE is the same as their regular menu
- Service is great (based on previous visits as well)

The Bad:
- Location is somewhat small, so less space and less selection of cooked items

Daimanya

We have seen many AYCE spots pop up all-over-the-place in past year or so.  As mentioned in my previous posts, the economy has dictated this trend where people are looking for the best-bang-for-the-buck during these inflationary times.  Hey, if one was to eat out, better make it worth it, right?  Well, there is a new player in town that is actually just the re-imagined Meet Oyster.  It is now Daimanya, and although you can still get a personal hot pot, the main portions of the menu features Japanese Izakaya dishes.

So we started with an array of small dishes including Wakame Salad, Green Salad, Edamame, Tako Wasabi, Ankimo and Meet Ocean Tartare (nice play on the old name...).  The items were pretty typical with the ankimo being my favourite.  Definitely the foie gras of the sea with its soft butteriness and natural sweetness.  Tako wasabi was also good with just enough wasabi hit.  It was served with crispy nori.  The tartare was more of soy-based mix, but the fish had decent texture.


Next, we were served 2 large plates of Beef Tataki and Tuna Tataki. So if they were implying that their AYCE dishes were near a-la-carte Izakaya quality, then these 2 did their part.  The beef was vibrant in colour and tender to the chew.  I would've liked a bit more acidity, but it was good nonetheless.  As for the tuna, it was evenly seared on all sides and buttery soft on the inside.  It wasn't particularly sweet, but the dressing made up for that.  Once again, I would've liked a bit more acidity to it.


We were served 2 types of Chawanmushi including the Snow Crab Roe and Seafood.  Now with the snow crab roe, it actually meant there was crab butter too and for me, that was fantastic.  The natural sweet and briny nature of the crab butter added umami to the otherwise silky and slightly sweet egg.  We also had the Butter Sake Clams and this was another a-la-carte quality dish.  The clams were all open and cooked perfectly.  They were tender and buttery with a light sake essence.


On the menu, I was delighted to see that they had Baked Motoyaki Scallops.  Unlike some other AYCE spots, these were actual scallops (not imitation) complete with the mantle.  Therefore, beyond the butteriness of the scallop, we got the exterior chewiness.  They were sweet by themselves, but the motoyaki was quite good being creamy and sweet.  The Baked Oysters came in 2 flavours including motoyaki and garlic.  For me, I preferred the garlic and it was very garlicky.  The oysters were large, briny and fresh.

Probably the most striking and impressive-looking dish was the Sashimi.  It was an assortment of Atlantic salmon, akami, madai, hokkigai, hotate, ika, hamachi, tuna and amaebi.  By appearance alone, the fish was pretty fresh with a nice sheen.  Texturally, some of them were a bit watery while some weren't all that sweet.  However, considering the options available and the fact this was AYCE, the sashimi was more than acceptable.

Of course if we have sashimi, we would also have various forms of sushi too right?  Well we got a plate consisting of Black Dragon Roll, Aburi Tuna Love Roll, Green Caterpillar Roll and Aburi Salmon Oshi.  These were pretty decent with chewy sushi rice and plenty of components.  I particularly enjoyed the oshi as the salmon was buttery and the sauce was not too greasy.  The tuna love roll was good with a balanced filling-to-rice ratio.  The black dragon roll could masquerade as a non-AYCE item.


Onto some fried items, I was surprised to find Fried Soft Shell Crab on the menu.  These are usually $10.00-$15.00 a pop on most menus.  This was breaded with panko and fried pretty aggressively.  Hence it was super crunchy.  The soft shell crab was still creamy and delicate inside, but I would've liked a lighter batter.  As for the Tempura, it was crispy and not a dense as it appeared.  The ebi was still buttery and sweet.  Veggies were cooked properly.


Continuing with the deluxe items, they had Foie Gras.  So nothing particularly wrong with its preparation (being seared and then drizzled with sauce), but the piece of crostini was far too large for the small slice of foie.  Otherwise, it was buttery and decadent.  Then we had the Salted Egg Yolk Wings.  With rendered skin, the wings were beautifully fried where the meat was succulent.  Unfortunately, the salted egg yolk slid off the wings and left the flavour on the plate.  I had to take one bite of the wing and then scoop up the egg yolk to have any effect.


As if the luxurious items we had were not enough, they also featured Deep Fried Lobster Tail as well.  The lobster tail was cut up and then battered with tempura and fried.  This was good with bouncy and sweet lobster meat with a crispy batter.  To make sure we covered most of the other times, we had the BBQ Hamachi Kama and the Saba too.  I thought kama was a bit overdone in spots, but the more fatty portions were buttery.  The saba was cooked quite nicely being moist and typical saba-tasting (which is a bit fishy, but in a good way).


Maybe one of the under-the-radar items was the Corn Cheese Croquettes.  Coated with crispy panko, the inside was exactly a combination of stringy cheese and sweet corn niblets.  Not as sexy as some of the other dishes, but delicious in my opinion.  We also had the Mentaiko Udon which was decent, but could've used more brininess to the dish.  Rather, it was pleasant with equal parts savoury and sweet notes.  It just need more fishiness.


Getting a few more normal dishes, we had some Sushi Cones including salmon, unagi and chopped scallop.  These were solid with enough ingredients nestled within the chewy sushi rice.  If we had eaten them right away, the nori would've been crispy too (but alas we were taking photos).  The Unagi Don featured enough eel to go with the somewhat dry rice.  When mixed together with the eel and unagi sauce, it ate well enough.

The last deluxe item we had was the A5 Miyazaki Wagyu Sukiyaki.  As you can see, the fatty slices of wagyu dominated the dish.  When cooked down, it was buttery and super soft.  It was accompanied by some mushrooms and napa cabbage.  For dessert, we were served the Premium Ice Cream Bars (Kirkland brand).  Pretty good way to end off an AYCE meal that featured more than a few premium items.  In terms of quality, I believe it is better than most AYCE spots.  When they say it is a near a-la-carte Izakaya experience, I would agree with that.  It doesn't quite get there, but it is good enough to justify the price.  If you go in with reasonable expectations, your meal will be enjoyable.

*All food and beverages were complimentary for this blog post*

The Good:
- Wide range of premium items on the menu
- Generally better quality than most AYCE spots
- Love those VIP rooms!

The Bad:
- It is better than typical AYCE spots, but it still isn't a-la-carte quality
- Parking lot can get full fast

Kurrywala Indian Restaurant

Sometimes, I cut through New West on my way home and go up 6th and onto Edmonds.  Therefore, I must have drive past Kurrywala many times over without ever thinking of stopping to eat there.  All I know is that it used to be Big 6 diner and I enjoyed their burgers.  Well, we finally made it out there since they wanted us to check out their buffet as well as some a la carte items.  More on the buffet later, but I'll start with the regular menu first!

Arriving on an extremely hot sizzling cast iron plate, the Tandoori Prawns were excellent being charred, but not burnt.  The smokiness really came through while the marinate ensured that each prawn was spiced and had some heat.  They were cooked perfectly where the meat was still juicy.  Even though the plate was super hot, the prawns were perfectly placed atop onions to ensure they didn't overcook.

Nicely plated on a long plate, the Fish Pakora came in huge pieces.  The fish they used was basa and personally, I didn't mind it.  Naturally, most people would prefer a cod of some kind, but that would make the dish ultra-expensive.  Back to the fish, the pieces were lightly coated and fried until crispy.  The fish was buttery soft and  there was a nice earthiness to the batter.  Served on the side, we found tartar sauce, which went well with the pakora.  Some people would prefer a chutney and I'm sure you could substitute. 

We tried the Vegetarian Momos, partly due to the fact they were out of the meat ones.  No matter as the dumpling skin was really good.  Being house-made and never frozen, it meant the skin was moist and not dry.  It had a nice chew to it, but ultimately was tender.  Inside, the fresh veggies offered up natural sweetness and that fresh crunch which would never be found in a frozen dumpling.  Really solid and I didn't miss the meat at all here.

We tried an array of curries including the Smoked Butter Chicken was creamy and mildly tangy with noticeable depth.  It wasn't just that it was smoky, but the richness of the flavour created a lingering effect.  The chicken was tender and moist where it had taken on the impact of the sauce. The Palak Paneer was noticeably darker in colour and as a result was also quite a bit more layered.  Rather than being one-note with just onion and ginger, this had a stronger earthiness and background sweetness. The Coconut Chicken was creamy, yet not heavy.  It was definitely aromatic and purposefully sweet. Surprisingly, I really liked the Mushroom Curry.  The problem with mushrooms is that they make most things soggy due to their moisture content.  It wasn't like this here where the flavours were still full of depth and spice.


For our carbs, we had the Garlic Naan first and it was a pretty fluffy version of the flatbread.  Most of it was pillowy soft while other parts had a nice elasticity.  On the bottom, it was slightly crispy.  There was enough ghee and garlic for impact.  We also had the Keema Kulcha featuring soft and fluffy bread while paired with a chicken curry and of course, butter.  I joyfully applied the butter generously on the bread while dipping it into the rich gravy.


Sure, usually we would get some basmati rice to pair with all of our curries and naan, but to make it more interesting, we selected the Chicken Biryani instead.  This featured some perfectly-prepared rice which was chewy, nutty and dry enough that it wasn't clumpy.  It had taken on all of the wonderful sweetness of the chicken as well as the spices.  This gave it a bit of heat as well as some earthy notes.


We also tried their buffet and we loaded up our dish with rice and a selection of curries including Goat Curry, Chicken Curry, Yellow Dal Tadka, Rajma and Makhni Paneer.  On the next plate, we had Samosas, Pasta Salad, Green Salad and Raita.  They also had Gulab Jamun, but didn't get any.  Obviously, the a-la-carte dishes we had were superior to the buffet, but the curries were still good and if you are hungry, it is a good value.  I enjoyed the goat curry and paneer the most.  Overall, the food at Kurrywala is delicious with good portions and fair pricing.  I prefer ordering off the regular menu than the buffet though.

*All food and beverages were complimentary for this blog post*

The Good:
- Large portions
- Generally on point execution
- Well-priced buffet

The Bad:
- Buffet could use a few more appies

Search this Site