Freedom Dinner @ Hanazen, Jaya 1

My first 2009 achievement...I finally manage to step foot in Jaya One!! Drove there many times past it but never really stopped to check out the food there. Glad that Mashi's er... Freedom dinner gave me a chance to do that.

What's a freedom dinner one might ask? Well, it's dinner to celebrate Freedom! Lol, no mashi has not caught up with me in ages, so it was time to sit down and chat and also catch up with the latest goss. Well i was quite poor on the goss but anyway...

We had no plans where to eat but in the end went japanese again :) which suits me fine because we both like it. And we had the 2 men tagging along ( men being her hubby and my brother :) )

Hanazen, i thought was a simpler japanese restaurant like the Zanmais but turns out i think it can rival the Rakuzens or the Mizus. No pics of the restaurant as i was eagerly trying to sit down, what with my laptop bag and camera bag together. I felt like i was carrying stones.

The place is not so spacious so it feels a bit like those small japanese restaurants in japan. And one thing i noticed - i thought i saw this plate before in my other post! ... Reuse? Recycle ? Or bought from the same place :P

Mashi brought hubby along and with lil bro, we could at least order a bigger variety of food to try. The table also needs to be bigger to fit the amount of dishes we tried

Something i noticed ( besides the plate ) is their rolls have a pretty good variety and not the usual off the mill ones. We went for the Fried Salmon roll which was the salmon lightly fried outside yet still pinkish as below. Quite excellent this one, the warm fried salmon against the cold rice and ebiko gives a rather strange combination which i like. A rather normal Unagi roll. Normal as in nothing much to differentiate about the Unagi roll. It was good but not special.
Mashi's favorite - i guess, because she has ordered this a few times in different places. I really cannot tell the difference between this and Oyako Don because both have eggs. The meat here is crunchy without being oily. Thank god, i don't want to ruin the good diet i was on the past few weeks. :P. Some fresh shitake mushrooms were added as well. Just enough for a 4 persons to share for this box.
The slowest sukiyaki ever.... is next. In Hanazen, instead of having the old fashion stove they have this new contraption that is like a metal stove ( not like the steamboat ones ) with a flame in the middle. Now... this flame is so slow. Our suki yaki took about 20 minutes to boil and then a few more minutes to cook and by the time we ate it, it was quickly finished in 5 minutes. Talk about effort! For the meat added, we took normal beef, however if you have $$ to spare- you can order Wagyu or Kobe to add in.
Halfway through dinner, we got distracted by the yeesang prepared here. It costs RM78 for this bowl, a fusion Japanese & Malaysian version, with my fav pickled seaweed and the traditional local stuff ( and what's this? Is that pickled daikon i see? ) Don't you think this is so bright in terms of color? Well we didn't eat it. The cook opposite where we sitting was so curious about all the photo taking, he passed it to me to take pictures :) Yeah and i will flog your restaurant as well! We like this place! Sadly the dish was returned to the rightful owners.

My must order in Japanese restaurants - Saba or mackerel. Grilled either in Shoyu or Teriyaki, i never fail to order this ( this fatty fish is good for you ) and in our case we went for Teriyaki. Oh this was yummy, just nicely grilled and enough teriyaki without being so sweet. Only gripe is more freshly daikon please? That would be great.

We had some orders of Yakitori here, Salmon belly with some leek and beef with asparagus . The salmon belly ( my first time eating this well i have eaten salmon but normally i don't favor belly due to smell of belly fish :P ) but this was good. Topped with some lemon to kill the jelakness this was quite nice. The beef with asparagus was also pre-t-t-y good. Too bad, i wanted another order of this.

Restaurant gets my thumbs up for good service and good food, despite one or two misses but there are other great dishes that i am curious to try here. Plus they are camera friendly as well and the waitress were nice enough to shut and turn on the aircon just to suit our slow boil Sukiyaki. Oh, do try their Hanazen style Yee Sang :) for a difference.

Location
Hanazen Japanses Restaurant
Blk C, Unit 43-G
Palm Square , Jaya One
No. 72A, Jalan Universiti
46200 Petaling Jaya