Ms Skinnyfat

A Food & Travel Blog from Singapore

Restaurant Review: Hanayoshi (Birthday Week BDay Part 1)

By Saturday, January 07, 2012 , , , ,

When one is sick, the selection of meals is pretty limited. Most would go for liquid foods such as soup, porridge, mushy stuff, ice cream?? My usual strategy is to stop eating completely and simply go into hibernation. However, it is THE B Day! How can one miss out on the chance of great food and awesome company right? 

I was honored to have Z celebrate my aging and she was extremely accommodating to my weird tummy, which demanded clean and refreshing tastes. We first decided on Duxton (based on our dessert destination, read it in B Day Part 2) and despite her pasta craving, she agreed to doing Japanese with me (a last minute change). Problem is, Duxton is not really known for Japanese food. I would usually head to Clarke Quay/Robertson/River Valley for that. Thank god for the invention called the Internet and Google, we ended up at Hanayoshi.  

Simple and spartan furnishing, very typical of Japanese restaurants. We started off with a Hotate sashimi. Very clean, sweet and succulent meat. We were reminiscing our best hotate experience. Mine was in Hokkaido where i had a freshly shucked hotate with shoyu. Heavenly. Z tried to explain her steamboat hotate and her method of cooking which involves a quick dipping of her sashimi grade hotate into boiling stock. Whatever it is, our dinner conversations always revolve around food and more food.

A good tamago IMO should always be made fresh and served warm. My Tsukiji experience at Sushi Dai taught me that. I didn't used to like tamago because it is too sweet but good tamago shouldn't be over-sweetened. The one at Itacho is not bad. Hanayoshi's is passable- slighty warmed but it didn't seem freshly made (i think it was the microwave).

This is my idea of a clean, refreshing and soothing meal- ice cold udon. Both of us ordered the Inaniwa udon. Call me a spoilt brat but noodles should be freshly made. Most packet ones (especially udon) don't have that chewy texture. Sadly, the ones at Hanayoshi is not freshly made. I ordered it anyway because i wanted something cold to extinguish the fire in the throat. It wasn't too bad and could be considered tangy. The sushi wasn't too shady as well- big chunky slices of fish and a small ball of rice. Wasn't particularly wowed by the freshness/cut of the meat but it was alright.


Z's tempura with her noodles. Chunky battered real crab meat. Good job! The thing i love about tempura is that it is always so crispy but somehow it never seem to taste oily. I need to learn to deep fry like this. One can never go wrong with deep fried foods (no wonder i don't seem to recover).

For desserts i had the Ume gelato. It seems milky but before the milk taste hits you, the refreshing sourish sweet Ume taste would kick in and it was just really exciting (if you can call it that). It may take you by surprise on the first tasting, then confusion sets in, but acceptance follows. Anyway, it comes with the set but if you order it on the side, it would cost you $8 a pop. Worth it? I'm not sure but you should try it for yourself. Life is too short, try everything once. :)
The fairly satisfied us who were all set to take on desserts. What is a birthday without sweets right? Stay tuned for Part 2 on Flor Patisserie. 

21 Duxton Road
Tel: +65 6225 5567
Mon-Sat: 12pm - 2.30pm, 6.30pm - 10pm

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