I know I'm a strange unique individual with different tastes. I am not a fan of sushi. I cannot stomach the seaweed wraps, and the rest . . . just doesn't appeal to me that much. But I do love AYCE sushi places. Strange yes, but the reason is that I do enjoy other aspects of Japanese cuisine, or their North American counterparts anyway.
Ottawa has several AYCE Japanese buffets, but a new one opened up about a year ago and it became LJ's and my favourite. 168 Sushi is a chain from the Greater Toronto Area. Inside the place is clean, sleek, and always packed.
It has a good size menu, with lots of non-sushi items for me to pick. A few other things I really like about this place is that pop is included, and the service. One of the challenges that AYCE places have I find is that you order dishes A, B, C, D and E, but after you hand the sheet in, you end up getting A, C and D. B & E never show up, or if they do, it's after you've ordered it again, and then you get double. Sushi 168 seems to get things right 90% of the time, which is pretty good.
It didn't take long for our bounty to arrive. The first few dishes I forgot to take pics. We were hungry after all.
97. Beef Fried Noodle. Nice big udon noodles with beef. A plain dish that I always get, and then kick up with sriracha sauce.
126. Kalbi. Beef ribs. LJ and I love this tender, sweet meat.
104. Spicy Tofu (pan fried). Stir fried veggies in a 'spicy' (but not really) sauce. Healthy right?
Ah the tempura basket:
133. Sweet Potato Tempura
141. Shrimp Tempura
What can I say, crispy, light and scrumptious.
In the background you can see 159. Seafood pancake. It was interesting, but not something I would order again.
151. Garlic Bread. Who knew a hot dog bun that looked burnt would actually be tasty garlic bread. What? hot dog bun garlic bread isn't Japanese?
146. Yakitori (chicken kabob). This is really more like a chicken karaga, which is basically breaded deep fried chicken. So good. Especially dipped in hot sauce.
92. Chicken Fried Rice. I know - I'm crazy adventurous. But this rice is sweater than say Chinese fried rice.
We also ordered a bunch of other dishes, but I didn't get snaps of them all. I did get pictures of my favourite that is only available at dinner. And that is 156. chicken wings.
Technically, there are two pieces in an order. But AYCE is ALL YOU CAN EAT - so I had a ton of these.
Lightly coated, then deep fried. That is it. They came out piping hot; it was very difficult to sit and wait for them to cool down.
The wings themselves were small to medium in length, and medium in meatiness. The skin was very crispy. The meat, very tender. The chicken was juicy. They were slightly greasy, as they should be.
These are just crispy, hot wings. A little salty. It shows how simple chicken wings can be great on their own.
I did dip a few in sriracha, but I pretty much stuck to the plain wing.
FINAL SCORE:
I can speak about the sushi, but the other food here is good. But my favourite is the wings. So simple, yet so good. Crispy, salty, hot and good. And always AYCE (at dinner time). 6.5/10
168 Sushi Buffet
1651 Merivale Rd, Ottawa ON (and other locations)
2 comments:
Alexis loves sushi but I don't like fish so I really don't like sushi. I like those wings, especially the tiny specks of red I see in the crust, I'm guessing a little cayenne.
@Chris - That is LJ and me. That's why I eat all the non-sushi.
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