Doraku Tak Laku

Doraku, swiped from williamnyk on Flickr.

The first Japanese restaurant I frequented at Life Center was Kamimura. The place had a great ala carte buffet but have since moved out after extensive renovation of the building. Now, it houses two new Japanese restaurants, namely Kingyo and Doraku. The latter is actually a branch of the famous fusion restaurant in the US. KH bought some dining vouchers off Living Social and we kinda delayed eating there until the expiry date forced us to go. Terms and conditions required KH to make a booking three days in advance and failure to honour the booking would render the voucher void. How annoying. Anyway, we booked for dinner on Friday with SK in tow. At first, they were seated inside, near the sushi counter. But SK complained about a weird smell. The waitress reassured them that it was the smell of the seafood (which wasn't reassuring actually!). On the other hand, my nose confirmed it to be coming from the ceiling. A whole bunch of hemp ropes were hanging from above. Must be mildew or something. We moved outside into the terrace with blaring music and view of the Jalan Raja Chulan jam. We wanted to order beer, but the menu was quite misleading. Out of the long list, only Tiger and Heineken were available. Obviously its not a popular watering hole in the area. Food-wise, a couple of hits and misses. The Doraku Roll was basically soggy (banjir). And the shiso leaves made it quite an acquired taste. The nigiri sushi was so-so and the cold tuna dish was plain slimy. The saving grace was the pepper ahi steak. Oh, so very good. Would go perfectly with alcohol. KH sulked a bit cause I picked up a call from work that dragged for 30 minutes! Not satisfied with dinner, SK suggested that we go have a second dinner at Restoran Meng Chuan, Imbi. We shared a single plate of Hokkien noodles. Strike two for us. It wasn't very good. The makan-makan Gods didn't smile on us that night.