new restaurant: Hokkaido Seafood Buffet
Hokkaido is a fairly new (to Pittsburgh) seafood
restaurant on that stretch of Browns Hill Road leading from Squirrel Hill
down to Homestead. (It's a chain; link is to their corporate page.) Dani and I went there for the first time Saturday night after Shabbat (around 9:30).
I know that "seafood" usually means the menu will be heavy on shellfish, which I can't eat, but the buffet aspect of that compensates assuming that they have any "just plain fish" at all, which they did. So I did not get to experience the full variety; Dani did.
We both felt that the food was decent. It is not the best of any of the niches it tries to fill; if you want better Chinese food go to a Chinese restaurant, if you want better sushi go to a Japanese (or Korean) restaurant, if you want better salads go to a vegetarian restaurant, and so on. But the variety compenstates for that and the food was good enough that I'm quite willing to go back.
One problem they have is in labelling. They do have labels for the dishes, but there were two problems: sometimes the placement didn't match up, and sometimes the labelling was insufficiently informative (e.g. "Hokkaido roll" -- what exactly is in that?). It took me rather longer than I would have liked to get the attention of someone who could tell mw which of the Chinese buns were the bean-paste ones, which were the shrimp ones. and what the unlabelled ones were.
One of the "stations" is for grilling; you load up a plate with whatever raw ingredients you like and one of their cooks will stir-fry it for you. Nice idea, but unfortunately for me, all of the grilling was being done on a large griddle (hibatchi?), and thus was tainted by shellfish and meat (yes, the place has meat too). I don't expect kashrut to be on the radar for restaurants (especially since only those at the liberal end of kashrut, like me, will eat there anyway), but enough people have shellfish allergies that it wouldn't have been unreasonable for them to be set up for cooking stuff in a clean skillet. Most people wouldn't need it; for those who do, it makes the difference between eating and not.
As best I recall (I wasn't taking notes), I had the following food:
Table service was good: drinks were kept full, used plates were cleared non-invasively, and they brought the bill at an appropriate time (which must have involved either timing heuristics or watching for when we went to the desserts). Our server was not able to answer questions about ingredients (didn't expect it but tried anyway, since asking the people behind the counters was nearly impossible).
Some reviews we saw noted that the place is noisy. We didn't experience that, but I can see how that would be a problem were the place full, given the layout and the lack of absorptive services. The lighting was good and the seating comfortable but for one problem: the chairs have some sort of near-protusion next to the front legs, so if you're someone who likes to tuck your legs under the chair, it gets in the way. I found a comfortable seating position, but I'm not used to having to do so consciously with chairs. (Booths, yes, which is why I avoid restaurant booths whenever possible.)
The dinner buffet is $17. They also have a $9 lunch buffet. Both of these are lower than I expected; I hope they're priced to succeed.
The following link is supposed to cause this entry to be linked with other reviews:
I know that "seafood" usually means the menu will be heavy on shellfish, which I can't eat, but the buffet aspect of that compensates assuming that they have any "just plain fish" at all, which they did. So I did not get to experience the full variety; Dani did.
We both felt that the food was decent. It is not the best of any of the niches it tries to fill; if you want better Chinese food go to a Chinese restaurant, if you want better sushi go to a Japanese (or Korean) restaurant, if you want better salads go to a vegetarian restaurant, and so on. But the variety compenstates for that and the food was good enough that I'm quite willing to go back.
One problem they have is in labelling. They do have labels for the dishes, but there were two problems: sometimes the placement didn't match up, and sometimes the labelling was insufficiently informative (e.g. "Hokkaido roll" -- what exactly is in that?). It took me rather longer than I would have liked to get the attention of someone who could tell mw which of the Chinese buns were the bean-paste ones, which were the shrimp ones. and what the unlabelled ones were.
One of the "stations" is for grilling; you load up a plate with whatever raw ingredients you like and one of their cooks will stir-fry it for you. Nice idea, but unfortunately for me, all of the grilling was being done on a large griddle (hibatchi?), and thus was tainted by shellfish and meat (yes, the place has meat too). I don't expect kashrut to be on the radar for restaurants (especially since only those at the liberal end of kashrut, like me, will eat there anyway), but enough people have shellfish allergies that it wouldn't have been unreasonable for them to be set up for cooking stuff in a clean skillet. Most people wouldn't need it; for those who do, it makes the difference between eating and not.
As best I recall (I wasn't taking notes), I had the following food:
- sushi and sashimi (tuna nigiri, salmon nigiri, tuna make, futomaki (vegetable), inari (tofu wrapped around rice), tuna and yellowtail sashimi): fish was of good quality; rice had that texture it gets when it's been sitting a while but was still ok
- baked salmon: nicely flavored; a little overcooked for my taste but within normal bounds
- steamed white fish: also nicely flavored and cooked just right
- garlic bread: very good (though it seemed out of place)
- marinated vegetable salad: good
- assorted salad veggies, plus a pickled radish (oshinko?): good
- fried vegetable dumpling (good), steamed bean-paste dumpling (ok; paper was hard to peel off)
- vegetarian lo mein: good
- lightly-sauted green beans: excellent
- fresh fruit (berries, mango, papaya): very good
- baked desserts: subpar
Table service was good: drinks were kept full, used plates were cleared non-invasively, and they brought the bill at an appropriate time (which must have involved either timing heuristics or watching for when we went to the desserts). Our server was not able to answer questions about ingredients (didn't expect it but tried anyway, since asking the people behind the counters was nearly impossible).
Some reviews we saw noted that the place is noisy. We didn't experience that, but I can see how that would be a problem were the place full, given the layout and the lack of absorptive services. The lighting was good and the seating comfortable but for one problem: the chairs have some sort of near-protusion next to the front legs, so if you're someone who likes to tuck your legs under the chair, it gets in the way. I found a comfortable seating position, but I'm not used to having to do so consciously with chairs. (Booths, yes, which is why I avoid restaurant booths whenever possible.)
The dinner buffet is $17. They also have a $9 lunch buffet. Both of these are lower than I expected; I hope they're priced to succeed.
The following link is supposed to cause this entry to be linked with other reviews: