Eating in Kuching - Dinner At Rakutei Japanese Restaurant

Regular readers of this Blog will know that I am a big fan of a good buffet. When I found out about a Japanese restaurant in Kuching serving an "Order Buffet", I got to give it a try.

Rakutei is located at the ground floor of Crown Square Shopping Centre. It is a part of the Lok Thian restaurant empire which runs several food outlets in the same venue. They came up with the novel concept of "Order Buffet" - basically you order all you can eat from a special menu of over 100 items. Don't over-do it though as you will be asked to pay for any left-overs !

The decor of the restaurant is nice and simple. The lighting is a bit too dim to my liking. With Japanese food presentation is a huge part of the package, and the dim light made it difficult to appreciate the colours and presentation of the food.

Faced with a menu of over 100 items, odering is no easy task. We started with some of our favourites.

The sashimi platter. Sadly you can only order this once.

Prawn and oyster tempura. The prawns were quite big and done very well. Oysters were also fresh and tasty.

Oysters in breadcrumb. These were a bit overdone.

The garlic rice and fried Japanese udons were both hits with the kids.

One of my favourites - grilled unagi. This was a bit too sweet to my taste.

The grilled Sanma Fish was very good.

Pan-fried salmon. Perfectly done - the skin crispy, and the meat still tender. We asked for seconds.

Agedashi Tofu - another hit.

Finished off with some mochi ice cream.

This "Order Buffet" is one of the best deals in town. The restaurant did not skimp on the quality of the food, and the great thing is you can order what you like as much as you like, except for the sashimi. Highly recommended !