tsuiteru sakaba maido ついてる酒場まいど, boat quay.

decided to buy the groupon for tsuiteru maido because it's opened by omotenashi dining gosso, and i liked that place. i made a reservation for saturday night, but it seemed like it wasn't necessary- we were the only ones there when we arrived at seven thirty. (also, i'd made an online reservation, but they didn't seem to have registered that...)

sadly enough, the menu was also different from the one that was on groupon. i remember being tempted by the seafood meatball with cheese that i'd seen on the online menu, but it was nowhere to be found on the actual one. oh well. it was stated nowhere on the menu, but when we were ordering, the waitress told us that for every order, we HAD to get two- which really didn't make sense. i was initially planning to try one stick of the hokkaido beef (pricey at $8.50), but since they had that nonsensical policy, i scrapped that plan. we decided to get the beef karubi ($3.50 each), chicken tsukune ($2.80 each), hanging tender ($3 each) and pork with shiso leaf ($3 each). also decided to get the aburi charsiew don ($14.80) and a tako chazuke ($6.80) for carbs.



we were served corn tea, which was delicious, and cabbage as an appetiser. it looked plain, but was crunchy, refreshing and delicious, with a light soy based dressing. our food was served surprisingly quickly after- i was expecting it to take longer.



i found the beef sticks too heavy on the sauce, which made it hard to appreciate the beef. i remember omotenashi dining gosso's skewers to be more refined- definitely prefer the skewers from there. the tsukune was alright, as was the pork. none of the skewers really stood out.



the thing that stood out was, surprisingly, the aburi charsiew don, which we were on the fence about ordering, because the grainy picture showed charsiew that looked more like the dry pieces atop most ramen- so not confidence inspiring. so glad we decided to order it despite that! it came with four fat slices of aburi-ed charsiew and a molten egg on top of pearly japanese rice. i really didn't want to eat much rice, but the rice was so good with the charsiew i couldn't stop, especially with the sticky, caramelized yakitori sauce.





the chazuke was just chazuke, though its presentation was a pretty dramatic one. it was served in a hot stone bowl and the waitress poured the soup in so that it sizzled, with smoke billowing. i found it a comforting eat, though, and the rice was the same as the one in the charsiew don. however, it was basically just rice with bits of tako- way too much rice, so we ended up not finishing it.



got warabimochi with green tea ice-cream ($7.80) as dessert. for its portion... way too pricey for basically four pieces of warabimochi and a scoop of ice-cream. i didn't eat the ice-cream, but L said it was quite good. i liked the warabimochi (then again i always do) but i felt that the syrup they'd liberally poured over the plate was overkill- it didn't need that. L concurred.

will i be back? maybe- but only for the aburi charsiew don. still a good deal, but i think i'll stick to just the charsiew don.

tsuiteru sakaba maido ついてる酒場まいど
69 boat quay
http://maido69.com