Hajime- In search of Fugu....

Hello! I have not been blogging seriously these 2 weeks for both my blogs. Sigh, work is busy, life is busy, and i am lazy. :) Anyway, i did manage to go to a nice place to eat recently when walking contradiction recently came back for a short break from her sojourn in Milan. Since the whole gang has not makaned for a long time, we decided to all catch up @ Hajime. A month back when were we are Basil Leaf, we said we will try FUGU. And Hajime down the road has fugu. After a few days of planning, i managed to get us a place at Hajime. However. There is no fugu. Yet. We were way too early. Fugu seasons starts early december but we were too early. I guess internally all of us brief a sigh of relief. Previous days there were emails that went like
CG: I don't want to die a fishy death!!!
NY: Is there enough antidotes???
JS: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ANTIDOTES!!
Me: Hey... the worse that can happen to all of you all is become zombies.... we could resurrect you all.
The rest: where basically going -> 0_o". Frankly fugu is pretty safe as you need to be a trained professional to cut this fish. And all japanese restaurants that serve this has certified fugu masters.


Anyway, since we have already made bookings we decided to troup in there and enjoy Hajime. We heard good things about this place so why not. It's friday and we want to r-e-l-a-x. Hajime is situated on Jalan Damai and i must say the set up is much nicer than basil leaf because of the parking. You dont have to park on the side of the road but there is ample parking inside. And besides- i am partial to japanese architecture.

Behind the lamp, hides some broken glass

We were lucky. We were given our own room because after 1 hour later, our noise level was .. very very very loud. Yes, walking contradiction and i are normally quite a pair once we start talking - lol!

Since 1/2 our gang was not in, we decided to order some starters - ff was angry and hungry ( angry because of work ) and needed some nourishment. We order some starters and boy.. they is small. There were 5 of us there but we ended up sharing the scallops with roe(Hotate Ninniku). I believe this is scallop, with roe + cheese. Yummy. P/S: i gave my scallop wings to FF. But this is an excellent dish. Everyone gave it a vote for tastiness but size wise it could be up a bit.


Kani Unatama was our next order of "starters". Again everyone's jaw drop because of the size of the serving. Absolutely yummy though. "Cutting" a sushi is definitely not a pretty sight.


Goodness more starters for us. Another Hajime Tower. This one we did not pick up from the menu book but an additional menu they have added to the menu book. So we picked Hajime Tower from the list. It's actually squid rings all nicely stacked up like a tower but i didnt get a nice picture so.. you ended up with a picture which is at the bottom of the tower :P. At the bottom of the plate, there is this nice tangy sauce that goes well with the fried squid. I like the way they fried this as it was not oily and quite crispy.

That's Walking Contradiction's going for the dip.

Potato mentaki, i think this is called is our final order of starters - by now, two more members slinked in. Got momentarily distracted by the funny japanese door and decided to add more starters on the list. It's basically potatoe with cheese on a hot plate but since we were hungry- no complains as well. After a lot of starters we finally all ordered our main meals. Most popular order that night was - Beef Teppanyaki, chicken teriyaki. Now their range of sets is not alot, i counted about 10 varieties.


Let's start with the pretty ones first. FF''s order of Salmon bento set. My what pretty colors. This is really fresh salmon. Look at the pretty orange colors in the salmon. And the salmon roe- was yummy. Well, she passed me some to nibble. I like the fact when you bite into it, there's juice squirting out. The fresh salmon was excellent. It's so fresh that you should eat it without wasabi to taste the sweetness of the flesh.
My teppanyaki beef. Not kobe and not wagyu but just as good a cut of meet. Tender and nice . And so tasty. OoH I had salmon in my salad as well. But what i cannot figure out is the chips. Should just drop it and put more veggies there. I like the dipping sauce they provided for the beef. Goes well with it. Also the miso smooth is really good, doesnt taste as if it is out from a pack.

Walking Contradiction's order of Hajime's Lady's set. Has a bit of everything in a size the ladies like. Small. But small it is not as it is quite a serving actually. I had my first try of baby octopus. Not bad... i am always a bit freaked out by by baby octopuses because it is a baby.

I couldnt' take pictures of the rest as it was a bit far to stretch across and i was hungry. My beef was so tempting that i had to eat it.

For those who ordered the set, it comes with a free scoop of ice cream. My order of the night is KuroGoma as usual. They serve it like mizu, with a dollop of red bean. But i would have preferred a smoother KuroGoma rather than this one. It's still tasty but i like creamy ice cream better.

We definitely had a good time there in Hajime. Alot of laughing and catching up.We should do this more often but of course - with lesser $$. Dinner was pretty reasonable in some sense- we only paid RM61 for 8 of us. Basil leaf cost us RM80 for lesser number of people.

Those interested in Hajime can check out the place.

Hajime.
No. 64,
Jalan Damai Off Jalan Tun Razak,
55000 Kuala Lumpur ( their website currently is not working )