Tajimaya Yakiniku ..... A Grill it yourself dinner

I remembered the times when we have 'indoor' barbeque at Seoul Gardens Korean buffet where we'll eat our fill and leave the restaurant smelling like a walking piece of barbeque. Barbequing outdoors over an open pit has its merits but can also get quite sweaty due to Singapore's humidity. Since then I've been shunning 'indoor' barbequing until recently at Tajimaya Takiniku where you can have real charcoal grill within air conditioned confined space and yet avoiding the nasties that I mentioned. 

The state of the art exhaust system allows even the use of charcoal. As we are grilling over the pit that was nicely placed at the centre of each table, a constant suction of air will pull the smoke through air vent slots at the circumference of the pit, keeping us comfortable as we enjoyed the food. It was fun barbequing our own food. Indoor barbeque experience will not be the same again.

Notice that the smoke from the piece of pork belly defying the physics of nature, flowing across the grill towards the circumference of the pit. Although some some strong air suction was in the works, we hear no noise from the exhaust system.

The restaurant has a god variety of Japanese beef, pork cuts as well as seafood drizzled with their specially concocted sauce that adds flavor to the meats. We had the Wagyu Kurabi (short ribs) , Kurobuta Pork Jowl, Kurobuta Pork Belly some scallops, shitake mushrooms and even some Japanese sweet potato. Although the Wagyu was a supposed good cut, I still prefer the Kurobuta pork belly. Most likely I over cook the Wagyu. It's not the ingredients that's lousy, it's just the cook's fault. If you'll like to order the pork jowl and pork belly, I suggest eating up the pork jowl before the pork belly. Save the best for last. The fats from the pork belly made it more tender and flavorful. The pork belly tasted best among the rest and we had a second serving. Apart from the good variety of food items for barbequing, there's a selection of shochu and sake that would go well with grilled food.

Afraid that we'll go hungry with just grilled food, we ordered some staples like my bowl of fried garlic rice. HY ordered some udon and we even order a salad that's definitely not the restaurant's highlight.

The Hokkaido milk pudding with Azuki beans (Japanese red beans) was quite good. It's pudding milky rich and had a mild sweetness that went well with the sweeter azuki beans topping.

1 Harbourfront Walk
Vivo City, #01-102/103
Singapore
Tel : +65 6377 0070
Tajimaya Website