Sushi Hiya

It was my birthday and so we went out for a dinner that would cost a fair amount more than what we usually spend. Sushiya (used to be Misako) is not really the high end of sushi restaurants, but close for us, but I’m not reviewing restaurants here, only food, so it doesn’t really matter about the place.
We had the Sushiya Boat, which came with not just a mastless wooden sloop covered in raw fish but a raft of sides and appetizers. They served it a bit quickly so that we were not quite finished with the first round when the second came and same with the third. They started us with a decent miso soup, though it lacked seaweed, a pickled bean sprout thing that they’ve served since before the name change and which I rather enjoy despite it’s somewhat odd odor – it smells something might be rotting but also a little salty, and a mixed “greens” salad with strawberries on the side and a honey mustard dressing. The dressing was pretty good but the salad relied too heavily on iceberg lettuce which is like making a trailmix with almost all peanuts: it’s okay for a bite or two but soon you start picking through it for the good stuff.
They brought us udon noodles and shrimp tempura next. I’m as much a fan of fried foods as the next guy but I’ve never been too fond of things deeply battered and then deeply fried. It’s too much breading. The tempura was a bit like a greasy shrimp sandwich and I could just picture the oil floating around on top of my stomach bile and irritating the lining. I only ate one and left the rest to Hilary, who was not at all interested in the udon noodles. I have only eaten udon noodles a few times and don’t have much to compare it to but they were alright.
Finally, the sushi and sashimi came. We went with the chef’s choice instead of spending half our night reading through the menu and figuring out what a Helsinki roll is. Who wants to look up definitions at dinner? Judging from the picture, we got shrimp, salmon, tuna, octopus, maybe some halibut and that disgusting egg thing. I don’t recall ordering a seaweed and rice omelette but there it was and there it stayed until our waiter swooped our plates off the table. The rest of the sushi/sashimi was good. Nothing remarkable. It was an average assortment without surprise. About what you’d order if you were trying sushi/sashimi for the first time. We’re pretty adventuresome eaters so it was a little disappointing. Perhaps we should’ve informed the wo/man preparing our meal of this fact. I mean, you order the chef’s choice and you expect to get something unexpected or new but that was not the case. The fish itself was about room temperature, which is the way some people like it, but I prefer some variety there too. We used to eat at a sashimi restaurant in Korea that served it in various states of warmth. Some even seared on the outside and still cool in the middle. That was good. Sushiya’s was just a bit above average. Aside from being generally tepid, the fish was of solid quality and I did get the worst wasabi burn of my life from a spicy tuna roll, however, I’m pretty sure it was from dunking it in my soy and wasabi dipping sauce. I had neglected to fully mix it up and I think a good-sized glob of wasabi stuck to the roll. That was the highlight of the eating experience. I wrote 4 Forks in my notebook but I’m not remembering it so solidly now so I’m gonna say a fair 3 to 3.5 Forks. Decent but forgettable.

More Pizza (hey, it's almost always at least edible)

It's pretty hard to make a bad pizza, so it is almost always a sure bet to be at least decent. I am an espoused pizza snob, but this one was pretty good, as you might be able to tell from the picture. It was at least above average. I got it at Little Italy City Pizza in Na Trang. It had some of the same problems most of the pizzas I've had in southeast Asia have had, namely the sauce was too sweet and the cheese wasn't mozzarella (it was jack or some other kind of white). But it had fresh basil and the crust was better than Domino's Pizza. I like a thin crust if it is done well and this one was. It was crisp without being to cracker-ish and soft without being soggy or doey. I gave it 2.5 forks in my note book, but hindsight has given me a rosier outlook, so I'm giving it a full three. It was better than average.

The USA Today of Beefsteak

I got this eyesore of a meal at a friendly little place called the V Cafe. It was highly recommended by our Lonely Planet guide - strike out number 10 for them. I ordered the beefsteak with french fries and a salad and what I got was a cold, pulverized rather then tenderized piece of meat smothered in an equally cold onion sauce of some sort. Also, it was more gray than brown or pink and it did not taste good. It didn't taste bad necessarily, but it wasn't good either. It's like calling USA Today a newspaper. It is but it's not really. The fries were good though. But I suppose any asshole can cut potatoes and drop them in a frier. I know I was pretty successful at it through high school. Bottom line, if you're ever in Dalat, Vietnam, don't order the beefsteak. All in all, I give it 1.5 forks. I've got to be a little lenient here because you can't fairly expect a good steak in the hinterlands of vietnam.

A Three Course Meal

As a whole, this meal is worthy of a total of 3 forks, but some dishes were spectacular and deserve higher marks and indipendent credit. The shrimp mushroom cream soup is one of these. It was spectacular and as you can see, eaten with gusto (it's already been finished in the photo). It was basically a chowder with shrimp instead of clam, and even was served with a patty of butter melted on the top. It was finished before the butter even stopped melting. Hilary and I were clashing spoons before long. We liked the soup so much that we contimplated ordering another bowl and right now I'd say that would've been a fantastic idea. Instead we ate the other dishes we'd ordered, mixed veggies and sweet & sour fish (not an entire fish this time), which were both about average, but whose taste had been diminished by the utter deliciousness of the soup. I can't really even think of the other two indipendent of the soup. I think the S&S fish was decent and the vegetables well cooked so that they retained some of their snap but took on some of the seasoning they were fried in. The soup is really what carried the day and it was easily worth 4 forks, maybe even 4.5.

Real Pho Chay

Coming into Dalat, we had passed a restaurant called Com Chay which means vegetarian food. We had made plans to eat there, hoping to get a good bowl of pho. The menu listed dishes such as BBQ shrimp, beef fried vegetables and pho chay. I had the pho chay and Hilary went with the shrimp, thinking it was a bit odd that a place calling its self vegetarian would offer meat. As it turned out, there was no meat, instead both our dishes came with meat substitute, Hilary's looking like little shrimps and mine, well, I got at least three different types, all of which looked like sandwich meat. The pho was thick with oil that had to be eaten fast so it did not coagulate and form a nasty crust on the top, and the faux-meat was less than palatable fare. It was gross and rubbery, like you had bitten of some bicycle tire tubing. Calling the this stuff a meat substitute is like calling a spare tire a wheel replacement. Add to that the repugnant flavor the meatless meat gave the broth, and it's a wonder that I was able to stomach the dish. It's a credit to the constitution of my stomach I guess. Plus, just about the only vegetable in sight was the green onion diced up and layed over top. Worthless. 1.5 forks.

Are Veggies In Dalat Different?

I don't know if vegetables are different in Dalat, though I suppose that some of those in this dish (Dalat Mixed Vegetables) only grow in colder climates such as Dalat's. I have seen a lot of menus that have vegetable dishes named similarly, so perhaps that's just propiganda to garner attention. I don't really know. Though I've tried several of these dishes because Hilary often orders them, none has seemed all that different in constitution, all seemingly a combination of veggies the cook found in the fridge that day in some sort of sauce (the sauce rarely is the same). This particular incarnation of mixed veggies was damn good though oddly cold, like it'd been sitting out for a while despite the relative quickness with which it was served. Perhaps someone ordered it and sent it back. I don't know, but the taste was good even though the temp was less than desired. Hilary had equally strange problems with her meal, supposedly a vegetable pizza that arrived looking much more like a Hawaiian style pizza. In the end, we were over-charged and when we asked why the price rise the waiter braught us a different menu than the one we'd ordered from, with all the prices increased by about 5,000-10,000 dong. We were bitter and cold and did not wish to haggle with this bastard, instead prefering to swear the butt-smear and to louse up their reputation: don't ever eat at The Lotus in Dalat! 3 forks for the food, and 0 forks for the restaurant.

Pho Chay, That Was Actually Rau

Again I borded the pho rau train. When I first got to Vietnam, I thought Pho Chay meant pho with veggies, but it turned out I was wrong and chay means vegetarian, not vegetable, so I had been going around asking for pho without meat when what I wanted was pho with vegetables instead of meat, or occasionally in addition to meat. This particular bowl of pho was eaten at Pho Bin in Dalat. It was not good, nor was the restaurant. I wouldn't recommend it, especially with so many other respectable places to eat in Dalat. We only ate here because we were tired and wanted to get something to eat before it got late. We over-paid and were under-satisfied, not a good combination. It seriously lacked vegetables, though the broth was okay despite being a bit spicier than we expected. I think this was the type of place you eat at and leave as fast as you can and never look back, forgetting even the meal if possible. I wish I could, and now, maybe having written this, I can. 2 forks.