Yuzuya @ Upper Thomson Road

Located along Upper Thomson Road near Thong Soon Avenue, Yuzuya is a Japanese ala-carte buffet restaurant. We endured massive jam on the SLE on a Friday night in an attempt to dine there. On the night of our visit, the restaurant sees few other diners and it was quiet.

House of Yuzu

The buffet is priced at about $29++ per adult for dinner and drinks are charged separately. The menu includes appetisers, grilled items, sushi, sashimi, tempura items, noodles and rice dishes. Most of the items comes in 1 piece or 1 stick per order. So the friendly waitstaff will ask for the quantity to be served at the point of order. Some of the items such as tori karaage will come in 3 pieces per order. For drinks, my table ordered yuzu citrus and ocha. Note that only ocha (green tea) is refillable. Alcoholic drinks such as sake/beer are available as well. Non alcoholic drinks are priced between $1 ~ $3.50.

The hot yuzu citrus drink was pleasantly sweet with some yuzu bits at the bottom of the mug.

Our strategy in ala-carte buffet seemed to be this: Order small quantity of the items that we wanted to try, and afterwards make a reorder if we liked it. We were there in the restaurant at about 830pm, and left at about 10pm. So we made probably just 3-4 rounds of ordering. Last order was at about 930-940pm.

Ordering of sashimi items in any Japanese ala-carte seemed almost mandatory. I view it as a more cost effective method to enjoy sashimi in quantity. The sashimi available for order were: salmon, red snapper, yellow tail, tuna and octopus.

tai (red snapper), hamachi (yellow tail) and sake (salmon) sashimi

salmon

The hamachi and salmon sashimi were sliced in adequate thickness, but the tai sashimi came in really really small pieces. Sashimi quantity was also 1 piece per order, so do indicate to the friendly waitstaff if you'd like to have more in that serving. I noticed that for our last order, the salmon sashimi came in thicker slices. For buffets, it would be better to eat the sashimi right after it was served, as the freshness level dips if left out on the table for longer period of time.

Items that we enjoyed but ordered just once:

beef

hot soba

baby octopus

potato cheese croquette

Items that I didn't try:

mekajiki (swordfish) sushi

garlic rice

fried sweet potato

Items that were not in my reorder list:

ebi tempura

gyoza

 shitake mushroom wrapped with pork belly (grilled)

The ebi tempura was just ok, with quite a thick coating of tempura batter on somewhat not so big prawns. The gyoza was really thin with little filling, while the grilled pork belly wrapping the mushroom was tough, and has a very hard to bite/chew skin.

Items that we enjoyed and reordered:

chicken yakitori

deep fried tebasaki (chicken wings)

grilled shishamo and mushroom

tori karaage

The chicken yakitori was tender and nicely marinated. The tebasaki although appeared quite flat and thin, was nicely marinated. The grilled mushroom was not much of a looker but it tasted good (if you like mushrooms!) with a heavy funghi scent that's almost as heady as alcohol. Shishamo tends to be heavily salted here, so you might want to just scrape off some of the salt before tucking in.  Tori karaage has a light batter coating, adequately flavored and it was juicy. The grilled chicken balls (tsukune) has a good texture and easy to chew.

Almost all of the grilled/fried items needed to be eaten right after it was served, as it would harden if left too long on the table.

There was a 11% discount for the buffet (excluding drinks) when paid using DBS/POSB card. So the bill came up to about $33 per pax.