Dong Dong Dong

Dear and I finally went to Kuishin Bo...and the trip suddenly puts me in a mood to write a short review abt it..It's quite refreshing to write a review without any cares of getting complaints from the restaurant...Dear and I have eaten at a lot of places, read on and maybe u'll see why this place compels me to get my hands stain in bad ink again..

And poor Dear ate on a faulty stomach that threatens to send him to the toilet every few hours. Hope he gets well soon.

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Walking into Kuishin Bo, I was struck by the many food counters and the numbers of seats in the restaurant. The waitress sat my dining companion at a small table for two. Moments later, another couple came in and sat at the table beside us, which was only like less than 5cm. Perhaps Japanese restaurants in Japan tend to pack their customers more to have a more cosy feeling and the restaurants tend to be smaller, but as a Singaporean who need my private space, my neighbours were sitting too near me for comfort. I think my dining companion was a little uncomfortable too as we did not speak much initially for fear that our exchanges about the stock market will be overheard by the neighbours. And dining is also about the fun and flowing conversation, no?

I love Japanese food and the thought of being able to savour all kinds of Japanese food in the buffet style restaurant heightened my anticipation of the meal. Choosing to dine on a weekday afternoon to avoid the crowd was a correct thing to do for the aisles of the place were quite narrow and when the hungry crowd steps into the restaurant, all wanting to eat at once, it can get quite difficult to manuvouer around. The restaurant has a paper steamboat section that serves different varieties of the steamboat in clear miso soup. I tried the chicken paper steamboat. The light soup and nice juicy chicken junks make the paper steamboat a good break from all the heavy eating. But be warned, like I say earlier, the restaurant is often crowded and bringing the hot pot of soup with fire burning underneath it back to your table from the food station while looking out for people can be quite a daunting or inconvenient matter.

The sushi counter serves up a variety of sushi with usual favourites like tuna and soft shell crab. Try the rolls, they seem to look more delicious than the sushi which did not have much flavour. There was soft shell crab and tempura prawn but not very well done and lack the piping hot sensation that gives the food its appetisting flavour. While the batter of the tempura prawns was light, it was tasteless and too much. I could only taste the batter and not the prawn when biting into my tempura prawn. There was also minced chicken ball soup and assorted food dunked in hot soup. I suggest skipping those and save your stomach to try the rest of the food since those tasted just like any ordinary meat balls and processed food that you can get in the supermarket easily.

I was a little disappointed that there was only one grill item in the restaurant- grilled pork. The grilled pork was sliced in large rectangular pieces, looking a shade of light brown in its seasoning sauce. Biting into the pork, I was surprised to bite into not only meat but also fats. Lots of fats- a huge rectangular slab of fat across the meat and they were not delicious fats but limp fats that make the mouthful of meat difficult to enjoy. To make good Japanese grill, there must also be fats in the meat. After all, it is the combination of firm meat and charred fats that gives the grill its oily smoky taste that we all like. Here at Kuishin Bo, they got all the proportions wrong.

The best item in the restaurant is the teppanyaki station where you can choose from a selection of salmon, dory, chicken and beef the meat that you want. Bring a number tag from your table to the station, choose your meat, hand the meat and your number table to the chef, and the waitress will later bring the food to you when it's done. The use of garlic, oil, special soy sauce cooked up an appetising plate of food that I ate with joy. Dip your meat into the dipping sauces and it's even more delicious.

Wanting to get some carbohydrates into my stomach, I tried the Japanese Curry rice. The curry was quite aromatic but I think it must have been sitting in the slow cooker for a little while as the curry tasted a little stale. I would have want to try the scallop porridge but I was already feeling too full and I wanted to save room for dessert. Because I went for the lunch buffet, I didn't get to eat the snow crabs that is only availabe for dinner. It is probably the most popular item in the restaurant. Perhaps it might be good.

At Kuishin Bo, the desserts are made in very small portions which is a good thing as it means that you can try more desserts after a heavy meal. Try the interesting looking colourful ice-cream lolli. However it doesn't taste as as good as it looked, being only made of starchy flour. The mango pudding is rather decent and so is the chocolate cake. At the cashier is a cheesecake counter where you can buy a whole cheesecake for about 7 odd dollars. Sampling of the cake is allowed. I stopped by the cashier to try a slice of the cheesecake, hoping to put a nice end to my meal. The cheesecake was green in colour, looking more like a pandan cake. Hoping for the best, I pop a piece of the cake into my mouth. I tasted the condensed moisture of the cheesecake.

The taste? It tasted like pandan cake.

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Now dun get me wrong, I had a nice time with Dear in the restaurant. After all, I had wanted to try that restaurant. But if I have to pay about $29 for a weekday buffet lunch, then I expect the food to be of a certain level of standard. I'm beginning to understand why some chefs tend to shun buffets. How fresh and good tasting can the food be when they are sitting there under the lights in an exposed container? I supposed this is especially so for Japanese food which counts on the freshness of the food for it to taste good.

So no more buffets for me in a long time. Until the next time I feel like gorging myself again, haha