Suminoya - Sydney

Suminoya

I love Suminoya. Suminoya has to be the the perfect Jap buffet for my partner and I. My partner loves yakiniku (barbequed meat). I love my sashimi. This jap buffet has both - and unlimited amounts of it.

At Suminoya, there are three options. You can order a la carte if you don't wish to buffet it, and there are 2 buffet options - Gourmet buffet for $41 per head (child $16), or the Premium buffet for $49 per head (child $19). There are a few more dishes to choose when you tick the Premium buffet - beef tongue and sashimi included. You can order for a whole hour and you can eat for an hour an a half. Doesn't sound like long - but it's enough time for you to be completely completely stuffed!

The beef tongue here is pretty damn good. Lightly seasoned with pepper, it sizzles and grills perfectly, leaving a chewy tastey thinly sliced piece of beef that fills your mouth with deliciousness. Beef tongue, however, is not for everyone. It's not the "melt in your mind" kind of beef. Rather, it is the beefy tasting chewy type.

beef tongue

Beef fillet is another dish on the Premium menu. The beef fillet chunks are drenched in a yummy marinade which leaves the meat juicy and tender after grilled. My favourite beef is probably still the beef rib - but I think we were too side tracked by ordering more beef tongue and other non-beef foods to have stomach for it.

beef fillet

Lots of scallops were ordered. These were deliciousness. The deal with these are - cook both sides til their sizzling but keep the middle rare. Makes the scallops juicy and super super yummy. BUT - if you over cook these, they will be come chewy, dry and kind of nasty.

scallops

Whenever we eat beef yukke, I always think back to the first time we were here with a huge bunch of friends. That time also marked the first time eating beef yukke for some of us. As it had such a yummy, sweet and intriguing taste, one of my friends could not stop eating this stuff - ordered and ate around 5 plates of this, and felt horribly sick afterwards LOL. Beef yukke is essentially raw ground beef seasoned with soy sauce, sugar, salt, pepper and sesame oil and you mix it with the shallots, sesame seeds and raw egg. Hence, it probably isn't good for you when eaten in mass - but we always atleast order one coz it's YUM :P

beef yukke

For me, we ordered lots of lots of plates of sashimi. There's salmon, tuna, kingfish and squid sashimi. My favourite is salmon and a close second is the kingfish. The sashimi is fresh, tasty and super sweet. Mmm... satisfies my sashimi cravings.

sashimi

I also love the salads here. My favourite is the seaweed and seafood salad. This is a bowl of fresh greens with salmon, prawns and seaweed tossed in a wasabi mayo. Super delicious!

seaweed and seafood salad

My partner also ordered the avocado and herb salad. This was likewise, fresh and tasty.

Avocado and herb salad

I also appreciated the Namaru - a variety of pickled veges korean style.

namaru

There's fresh prawns and there's garlic butter prawns cooked in a foil tin. Being too lazy to deshell, we opted for the garlic butter prawns. For my partner, he ordered unagi (eel). He said it was pretty good.

garlic butter prawns

Unagi

Chicken here is AWESOME. super super tender. super super juicy. A must have - even thought it seems so simple. The chicken pieces here still have the skin attached. As long as you manage to grill the skin, you get the succulentness of the chicken and the crispyness of the skin. Very very yum. :)

Chicken

This dish will remind me to always ask what something is before I order. Trying to order something different from my seaweed soup, I opted for the adventurous egg kuppa. What this is, is that wierd rice in soup with an splattered on top. I don't think I'm a fan of rice in soup. It has a weird texture... too soggy to be actual rice and not soggy enough to be porridge. I don't think I'd be ordering this again.

Egg Kuppa

bbqing the food :P

Last but not least - dessert~!!!! There's green tea and vanilla icecream, lemon sorbet, and coffee jelly. The green tea icecream is smooth, rich and creamy with a delicious green tea flavour. All icecreams are served with azuki beans and cornflakes. I'm also a fan of the coffee jelly which is topped with evaporated milk. According to my partner, the coffee jelly is strong. I think it's perfect~!

Green tea and vanilla icecream

coffee jelly

We hadn't been here for more than a year. The food quality has not worsened. It's just as yummy as ever. The price has likewise, not gone up for a year ago. Definately worth coming back time and time again. However, do NOT come here in your best clothes and you are bound to exit smelling like barbeque :)

Ratings:
Food - 9/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 7/10
Overall - 31.5/40

Suminoya
1 Hosking Place
Sydney
NSW, 2000
tel: (02) 9231 2177