there are 2 november birthdays among our group of close RI friends.

one of us bought a groupon deal & arranged a 8pax lunch at santaro by gion at amara hotel tangjong pagar on 18.11.2016. ^^

he also arranged the cake & gifts. 🙂

we took the unagi don set – S$49.90 for 2pax.

we were lucky today we had a private room by ourselves.

first was a refreshing salad. 🙂 good.

& a potato salad with tuna rillette. ok.

also a chawanmushi.

chawanmushi was competent. but it was plain not crabmeat or ikura so just dashi for flavours. texture was good, nothing special though.

adegashi tofu likewise. not too bad

crispy tofu soft inside, nice sauce, garnished with radish, scallions & nori (seaweed).

sashimi moriawase was ok – tuna, salmon, hotate, atlantic surf clam. quite decent.

tempura was competent. crispy. my second best dish for this lunch.

prawns & veg. i would say about ichiban boshi standard, not as good as sun with moon.

sishamo karaage.

quite ok. fresh fish. good batter. sishamo just not my favourite.

the best dish for me was the tori katsu.

the plate was shared by 2pax.

chicken cutlet was tasty, crispy. chicken was tender.

unagi don was so so.

unagi was pretty ok. the don (rice) though was quite poor.

not sushi vinegared rice, plain rice & no tasty sauce.

yogurt dessert not much to say i guess.

food spread & quantity was pretty good, many dishes.

food standard & taste quite mediocre. with the groupon promotion, pax lunch was just S$25nett. we paid S$3++ pax for the ocha but i guess you can don’t order tea.

service was quite good. we had a room by ourselves, and the servers took photos for us & also brought the cake & serving plates etc.

we had a good time among close friends. for one, the birthday gift was 2 bottles of wine. for the other, we decided to get him some electronic stuff, so the organiser was going to the IT show the following week to get something.

as always, a great time with old buddies…this time with the added entertainment of musing over the biggest con in american history.

c.h.e.f andy

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