Food: Tanuki, Orchard Central.

First Word: Disappointing much.

It was our first saturday back from Hong Kong and "T" and I were craving for all foods apart from Chinese Food.
While I was busy at work, "T" ran a search on Japanese food and up came Tanuki Raw at Orchard Central.

We decided to give it a try since it is the sister bar of Standing Sushi Bar which was pretty awesome.

However, Tanuki was a REAL DISAPPOINTMENT. We are definitely not heading back and yes I am not mincing my word.

1. The Service. 

I absolutely am frustrated with the service crew. We arrived around 7-ish to find Tanuki packed with people, only to realize that majority of the crowd was there for the Happy Hour Promotion. 

Between 5 - 8pm, Tanuki is having the following promotion:

$10 Drinks ( Red Wine, ,Martini. Cocktails) + $3 Sashimi + $2 Oysters. 

Not a bad deal I must say, but too bad, We were not there for the drinks nor the oysters.  We were in search of good quality Japanese food - which we did not get. 

Instead, service was slow. The service staff has smiles wiped off all their faces, except for this Indian guy 

( sorry, we didn't get your name). We even had to ask like twice or thrice to get more tea ( I almost died of thirst) and even to repeatedly call for our bill! 

Goodness, it wasn't like we were rude or that we were there only for the promotion. We ordered proper meal for goodness sake. Even typing about this right  now frustrates me. 

Talking about the orders were even worse. 

We got ourselves: 

1. Sashimi Salad

2. Ocean Rockefeller 

3. Some Maki 

4. Yakitori Don. 

and this is the expected order that we want our food to arrive. Isn't that like common sense? 

YOU DO NOT SERVE YOUR SALAD LAST. 

YOU SERVE YOUR APPETIZERS AND STARTERS FIRST BEFORE YOU EVEN SERVE YOUR MAINS. 

Can you imagine our horror when our yakitori don arrived first and my sashimi salad arrived last? 

Super frustrating. 

2. The food. 

Alright, to give credits to the food, here are some pictures of what we ate and how we feel about it. 

Our maki arrived first : Pales in comparison to similar maki over at Standing Sushi Bar. However, for the price of $9, it can be pretty interesting. Floss + Mayo + Salmon atop fried salmon skin. We thought the rice were overly soft ? ( almost like glutinous rice) and tasteless. It could have been better if the maki were smaller in size with more slices so that one can better enjoy the fusion of the flavor.

Next our yakitori don arrived before our salad or our starter. It was shocking.
The chicken tastes like gong-bao chicken I'll get at a Chinese Tzi-Char stall but one of a milder taste. The taste of the red-green peppers is too overwhelming. We wonder if it was intentional.

Still, kudos to the lotus chips and the not-so-moist-rice. Otherwise, really forgettable.

This ocean rockfeller arrived shortly after our yakitori don. 3 of these cost us $12. 

The taste? Interesting fusion of salmon and mince scallop and hokkigai. We personally thought the meats did not tie in well with the cheese. The scallop were so minced and the salmon were like raw, the entire taste is pretty weird to us. 

Final verdict? - Can give it a try though if you are interested to know how it taste like. No one can really resist the idea of scallops with cheese. 

and so this beautiful looking sashimi salad arrived last. 

The salad dressing has really strong wasabi flavors in it. ( Bad news for the both of us since we do not even remotely like the taste of wasabi.) Most of the better Japanese Restaurants that we visited will ask us if we will like wasabi in our dressing or even in our sushi ( Sakae sushi do ask okay! ) Hence, another example of them being less than attentive to the needs of their clients. 

The Maguro ( Tuna) is tasteless! It is like frozen and then thawed, resulting in a total loss of taste. I couldn't take another bite of it and "T" finished them all, leaving me the salmon. Hence, to give them their due credit, 

their salmon is indeed nice. Sweet and chewy. But that's that. Even their meager amount of Swordfish was forgettable. 

In essence, we were just very disappointed. We spent $61 on this meal and we know we are not going to give it another chance. 

Nevertheless to give it its due credit: Maybe coming for its happy hour is a better idea. Based on our observation, 90% of the in-house gas were enjoying fresh salmon and oysters. Maybe that will be more worthy of your money. :) 

love, 

S.