While I was eating through Europe my brother was busy blogging away, this is what he thought of the buffet at Sakari Japanese Restaurant in Perth.
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Sakari is a Japanese restaurant bringing a fresh dining concept to the Perth scene. I absolutely love Japanese food and buffets… so was super excited when Michelle asked me to go eat on behalf of her.
Just over a month ago, Sakari Japanese Restaurant re-launched their menu, what was originally your usual Japanese ala carte menu was replaced with a prepared/cooked to order buffet service. For $32.90, you can order anything you like within a 2 hour limit.
Situated on the 1st floor of the The Grid Sports Bar, there is an elevator tucked to the left side that you have to take to get up to Sakari Japanese Restaurant. This reminded me of restaurants I’ve been to in Sydney such as Wagaya and also the ones in Hong Kong.
On arrival, the waitress seated us by the window with a nice view of William Street and gave us a run down on how Sakari Japanese Restaurant’s buffet works.
Before coming to Sakari Japanese Restaurant , I was expecting to walk into a big spread of ready-made food that is commonly associated with buffets. Instead, at Sakari Japanese Restaurant they have one buffet station with sushi rolls, salads and dessert and the rest of the menu is on order slips that you fill in and hand to the waitress.
Because everything is cooked to order, there is some waiting time from when you hand your order in to when you actually get your food… especially if it just so happens that other tables are ordering around the same time. For this reason, I recommend ordering in large batches at a time to make up for this lag.
Here’s some of the things I ate:
From the buffet station we got a combo of edamame beans, katsu chicken sushi rolls and seaweed salad. The sushi rolls were and tasted a lot like the ones you’d get at Japanese takeaway restaurants in Perth.
Probably my favorite dish from their menu is the Aburi “fire-torched” salmon and prawn nigiri (no seaweed) sushi. It went really well with mayo on top. I could eat hundreds of these.
The salmon sashimi was really fresh and cut into nice bite size pieces.
Note: on the order sheet, the quantity is per slice, so if you put a quantity of 1, you will only get 1 slice of sashimi!
We also gave the fried rice and the teppanyaki beef and pork a go. The fried rice had a yummy homely taste about it, while the teppanyaki wasn’t a stand out, it kind of reminded us of salted korean bbq meats.
In true buffet fashion, we left the deep fried stuff or what we call the “finishers” to last. The takoyaki (octopus) balls are the same ones you’d get at most Japanese restaurants in Perth, while the gyoza dumpling had a biscuit like texture as a result of the deep frying process instead of the usual panfry method.
We also decided to order a side of curry for dipping our fried dumplings
Even though I was absolutely stuffed at this point, I’m a massive sucker for ramen and decided to order a bowl. The broth was really tasty and reminded me of a fresh version of nongshim 2 minute noodles, however the noodles were undercooked and still tasted doughy.
To finish off, we had green tea icecream and another serve of sashimi. The two don’t go well together so I had to cleanse my palate with something salty before moving onto the salmon from the ice cream. The brand of green tea ice creamSakari Japanese Restaurant use is one of the better ones I’ve had at Japanese restaurants in Perth. It had a perfect balance of green tea flavor to creaminess without the overpowering bitterness of some green tea ice creams.
If you’re a Salmon sashimi & fire-torched sushi fanatic or like a wide variety of dishes, Sakari Japanese Restaurant is worth a try especially when you’re parting with just $32.90 for a cooked to order buffet service. The service however needs sharpening so go with plenty of time on your hands and I’d just load up on salmon and green tea as the other dishes weren’t stand outs.
Disclaimer: foodie cravings was invited as a guest of Sakari Japanese Restaurant, see disclosure policy for more details.
