Celebrating our anniversary at the Miraku Japanese Restaurant

I haven’t had time till now to get the tonnes of pictures I took of the places we went to eat over the weekend organised and ready to be put up here. If you don’t know already, we are Japanese food fans so naturally, we chose to go to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary.

Since we’ve never tried the Miraku Restaurant over at G Hotel, we went there for their set lunch.

The ambiance is very warm and cosy. The decor, simple and elegant.

Though it looks like a really expensive place, we were pleasantly surprised to find the prices quite reasonable. Here’s a look at the prices..

These are what we ordered…

And we also ordered some ala carte items of softshell crab tempura and deepfried squids.

I know it looks like we are a couple of greedy hungry ghosts but we expected small portions, as is usual at some Japanese restaurants. We never trust the pictures in the menus and expect portions of be only 1/10th of what was shown in the pictures. So, we ordered the large Lunch Set B and the udon set and those extras thinking it’d all be only bite-size portions.

The squids are Mr Picky’s favourite ever since he took a liking to steamed baby octopuses and eating anything with tentacles so we had to order that or face being ‘nagged’ by him throughout the meal.

We get a plate of braised soy beans (bottom) each and the top picture of three hors d’ouvres-lookalikes comes with the Set B. I think.

Turns out the soy beans are great! But those hors d’ouvres-thingies are something else. It’s not exactly horrid or anything, just different. And it comes with a tiny glass of some orange-flavoured alcohol.

Since we’ve never seen anything like it (hey, we only frequent Japanese fast-food joints and Japanese food buffets so we hardly know about all these weird Japanese high class stuff, okay?) we don’t know we are supposed to eat those and then drink that nasty glass of orangey thing or to dip those food in it before eating it or to pour the liquid on the food before consuming. So, I tried dipping the food in the liquid before eating. It tasted weird. I ate the food and then took a sip of the liquid, it still tasted weird. Oh well. What I can gather is that the brownish pieces on the left are some sort of fishy smelling fishcake, the centre is just plain old egg and the one on the right is braised pungent tiny fishes.

Then comes the sets proper…

I’ll have to say, I don’t usually like udon due to a bad experience I had as a child when travelling in Japan with my father. Till now, the smell of udon just puts me off. So, this set is The Food Critic’s. He love Japanese noodles.

I took a mouthful so that I could write a full review of the food (see? the sacrifices I made for this blog..). Surprisingly, the noodles are smooth and the soup delicious. None of those salty, ajinomoto-laden concoctions you will find at certain Japanese restaurants. I even took a second mouthful of those noodles.

Then, here’s the Set B which is supposed to be shared amongst the three of us…

I was quite, quite surprised by the portion. It is big. The set has grilled unagi, miso soup, chawan munshi, sashimi, tempura, steamed vegetables, salad, dessert and rice. That’s quite a lot. The best part is that the unagi is quite big too. The moment I saw this, I regretted ordering the extras…

The top left is the softshell crab tempura, the two pictures on the right are the deepfried squids. The bottom left is the tempura that comes with the set.

And…

My verdict:

The meal is worth every sen and then some. Portions are big, sashimi is fresh and the cooked food is flavourful and painstakingly prepared to almost-perfection (not to mention nice presentation too!). It is one of the best Japanese food I’ve tasted in a long time. Oh and I love the ambiance and great service.

Rating: 8/10

Price:$$$

Here are the restaurant details:

Miraku Restaurant

Level One, G Hotel, Gurney Drive

Daily Lunch
12.00pm to 2.30pm

Daily Dinner
6.00pm to 10.30pm

For reservations: 04-229 8702

Note: Do go early, especially for lunch, as they sometimes close by 2pm.

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