Yakitori Enmaru 焼鳥 炎丸 @ ION Orchard (Part II)

Second time visit with a first-timer. Wendy, my friend, made reservations for us, but on a weekday evening, it was rather unnecessary. The place was quite quiet.

handwritten welcome note

I was happy to note that the $5 shochu promotion (on selected shochu) is still available, so got myself a Tomino again.

We ordered yakitori of course, and this time round, we had tsukune oroshi (chicken meatballs with grated radish), garlic shitake mushrooms, ringo buta bara (pork with apple slices) and tebasaki (chicken wings). For appetiser, we had the tako with wasabi. Also ordered the ibushi yaki and onigiri. I had the salmon onigiri while my friend had the same but grilled version.

As usual, the raw cabbage with miso was served as otoshi. I think they forgot to drain off the water from the cabbage as there was quite a pool of liquid at the bottom of the bowl.

a feast for two

Everything was served to us, almost all at the same time. So that was how we ended up with a table full of food! On hindsight, it would be better if we'd order bit by bit and have those first, before re-ordering. The grilled items probably tasted better while it was still hot off the grill.

mushrooms!

The grilled mushrooms had a nice strong scent. Heady woody flavour. Yums. Next, we had the deep fried chicken skin in ponzu sauce (kawa ponzu).

kawa ponzu

yummy sinful deep fried skin

The deep fried chicken skin was kind of addictive, like crunchy keropok, albeit probably a more sinful version.

Onigiri, I kind of liked. Sure, the rice didn't hold and half of the onigiri crumbled after a few bites and there were scarcely any salmon in it, but somehow, this mound of rice ball wrapped in seaweed was like comfort food. Simple and filling.

salmon onigiri

Ok, I cheated. At times, the plain tasting onigiri was jazzed up using the tako wasabi. Haha! New flavour to consider.

small mound of slimy tako with spicy wasabi in a large bowl

tsukune, tebasaki and buta ringo

The tsukune was a little disappointing. The meat didn't hold together (not as compact as previously tasted) and it was a little dry on its inside. Perhaps we had left it out for too long before consuming it. Tebasaki was pretty juicy, while the apple pork was a little hard. It was a good chew though and the apple slices were sweet.

ibushi yaki, close up

The ibushi yaki and the tako wasabi were quite salty, so it made us thirsty for a long time.

Overall, the service was friendly and polite. The place was fairly relaxed.

Thank you Wendy, for the birthday treat!

Here's the link to first visit.