Restaurant Reviews

Restaurant Reviews and Food Musings

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Fed up with celebrity chefs drizzling sauces over undercooked pieces of meat? I am!

I regularly dine out and am happy to share my restaurant experiences, and musings on food with you.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Sakura

Restaurant

Sakura
Luntmakargatan 59
113 58 Stockholm
Sweden

Phone (46) (8) 673 45 55

Website www.sakura.gastrogate.com

Overview

Eva and I, whilst we were in Stockholm the other week, decided to go Japanese and tried out Sakura.

Sakura is a Japanese restaurant and karaoke bar.

Ambience

Sakura occupies two floors; the ground floor contains the main restaurant and the basement contains the karaoke bar and a smaller function room for private karaoke parties.

It is laid out and decorated in a traditional Japanese manner, with cherry wood tables (each containing a small grill cut into the centre) and wooden fittings. However, chairs are provided so you don't have to sit in the more traditional Japanese manner on the floor.

The restaurant was quite busy, but given its size there was no problem with fitting two more guests in. Although both karaoke bars were in full swing, the noise from downstairs was not intrusive.

Menu

The menu offered an excellent selection of Japanese dishes including; sushi, small grill dishes, sukiyaki and a few Western style grills dishes. The menu was in English and Swedish.

Service

Our waitresses were very friendly, efficient and pleasant. They helped us understand what was what on the menu, and explained how to cook and enjoy our main dish.

Food

We started with two dishes from the small grill menu, scampi and ox tongue; together with salmon, beef and sweet shrimp sushi.

The grill was heated up and we placed our cut pieces of scampi and ox tongue on the grill to cook. These came with soy sauce and some salad. The meat and the scampi were tasty, tender and succulent; it was rather fun to cook them ourselves, and made the meal more enjoyable being able to share the dishes.

The sushi were absolutely first class, my own favourite being the shrimp.

We chose to share the sukiyaki for our main course. This consisted of thin slices of raw beef, fresh mushrooms, cabbage, glass noodles and other vegetables.

All of the ingredients were raw, and needed to be cooked in the sukiyaki sauce that was placed in a stew pot in the grill on the table.

When this had become hot enough we placed various ingredients into the pot, a few at a time, then (when cooked) dipped them into raw egg and ate them with the accompanying boiled rice.

There were ample portions of both meat and vegetables, all of which were fresh and tasty. The sukiyaki sauce was unctuous and did not overpower the flavours of the ingredients.

We thoroughly enjoyed our main course, and would most certainly chose it again.

The bill, which included a bottle of Mateus Rose and a bottle of sake, came to 827SEK before service.

Overall Opinion

A splendid evening in a splendid restaurant, well worth visiting again.

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