And many bloggers have also blogged about Jogoya, the other famous Japanese buffet restaurant located at Starhill in KL.
I have been to Jogoya twice, but have never ever stepped my foot in Tenji until less than three weeks ago.
I was there for a buffet lunch meeting with blogger Jam who had come to KL for a short holiday. However, during that lunch, I did not bother to take any photos as I was more interested to discuss with him about our impending China trip in August.
And so when I was invited for buffet lunch at Tenji again (what luck!) with a group of friends last week, I decided to take my camera along! I guess it's my turn to blog about Tenji! Haha!
This is the landmark roundabout with the fountain in the middle. Once you see this fountain and the roundabout, you know you have come to the right place.
Many people have asked if Tenji is better than Jogoya. Before going Tenji, I had the same question in my mind. I even asked some bloggers who had been to both but I received mixed responses. So continue reading for I shall reveal which is better!
We reached Tenji at 11.30am sharp. The buffet lunch starts at 11.30am and ends at 4pm daily. My friends were very kiasu (I think me included) and they wanted to make sure we were the first to arrive and the last to leave. Haha!
As we were led to our seats inside the restaurant, we passed by the nice outdoor dining area.
As it was hot, they had lowered the blinds. But later in the evening, when it started to rain and the weather turned really pleasant (to me rain is very pleasant!) they raised the blinds.
Nice or not? Did you notice the TV screens in the photos above?
You might be wondering why there is no one around. Well, that's because we were among the first to arrive and the last to leave, that's why! Haha!
If it was not too hot sitting outside, I would not have mind dining in the outdoor area.
But once inside, there were actually a lot of people already! And I thought we were early birds! Definitely could not beat kiasu Malaysians! Who knows, maybe there were some Singaporeans there. Haha!
The photo above shows the sashimi area where you can get your raw oysters, scallops, kisu fish, prawns, salmon fish, clams and octopuses.
Look at those funny shaped lights hanging from the ceiling. Aren't they cute?
The first thing I did was head to the sashimi area. Look, this is my very own sashimi plate. Yummy!
Can you spot in clockwise direction the raw oysters, salmon fish, kisu fish, tako (octopus), hokkigai (clams) and prawns? Too bad they didn't have scallops! I remember eating scallops during my lunch with Jam!
I think the sashimi here was comparable to the ones I had in Jogoya. But somehow I felt the oysters here were slightly better, probably fresher. So I took four more. Yummy!
Of course these oysters were not as large and meaty as the ones I had in Shangri-la KL last time, but they were pretty good.
If you like sushi, then this place will not disappoint! Anyway, what is a Japanese buffet without sushi, right? I personally don't really like sushi that much, so I did not really eat a lot of them.
Here's the sushi station where a chef was busy making sushi.
There were lots of different types of sushi available.
Below were some photos I took of the individual sushi.
The prawn sushi. I was tempted to just eat the prawns on top and throw away the rice!
Salmon sushi. I did not eat this. I prefer just raw salmon fish! Why eat the rice which is so filling? Might as well save my stomach space for other food! Haha!
Century egg sushi? Have any of you tasted this before? Well, I did not taste this. Not a big fan of century eggs anyway!
My friends and I observed this chef preparing the sushi.
And then I ordered two pieces of ebbiko sushi which one of my friends said was nice. The chef put in extra ebbiko (fish roe) on one of them for me. How nice of him!
See the difference? The one on the right was overloaded with ebbiko! Yummy!!
I don't know, but I think I prefer the sushi here compared to Jogoya. Maybe I didn't try all the varieties in both places so I may not be giving an accurate assessment of which restaurant has the better sushi. But one thing's sure - Tenji definitely score more points for presentation!
I was searching for my favourite unagi (eel) meat but was surprised I could not find it! How could any Japanese restaurant not serve unagi? Well, maybe for that rather cheap price we were paying, they decided not to offer this rather expensive dish!
(By the way, we paid RM39.90++ per person for this buffet lunch. This is promotional price as the normal price is RM77.00++)
What to do? I had to settle for the unagi handroll. Better than nothing!
Actually this unagi handroll was not too bad! It had to be ordered using the metal clip system. (For those of you who have not been to Jogoya and Tenji, I will explain about the metal clip system in my next post). I had a few of those handrolls! Yummy!
I do not fancy fried stuffs like tempura, but if you do, then you should not miss their tempura station!
This is my tempura dish which my friend took for me!
It was delicious. Well, it does look delicious, doesn't it? Tempura is known to be healthier than normal deep fried food as the batter is lighter and tends to carry less oil.
You can see in clockwise direction 2 tempura prawns, 2 tamago egg rolls, 1 shishamo fish (on stick), 3 tempura mussels and of course the bowl of tempura dipping sauce.
During the lunch with my friends, we were given seats that were near the doorway. It was quite hot despite the place being an air conditioned place. I guess it's because the door kept opening and closing whenever someone walked out or in.
All my friends were complaining about the uncomfortable and warm environment so I asked the staff if we could shift to another table. Unfortunately, she said we could not because the place was fully booked that day!
Imagine - it was fully booked even though it was lunch time on a working day! No prize for guessing how full it would be during weekends!
To cool myself down, I quickly went for this coconut drink.
I think it is similar to the imported coconuts I had in Jogoya. Very cool, refreshing drink! If there's one drink you must not miss, it is this coconut drink! The coconut is different from the usual local coconuts you drink as it has an aromatic pandan flavour to it.
In fact, there's usually a queue lining up for these coconuts so you can see how popular this drink is. I myself drank 3 coconuts!
We made a beeline for this coconut and tried to get as many as we could. Talking about kiasuness!
As we actually sat just in front of the coconut counter, it was quite easy for us.
This is the coconut counter although at the moment I took this photo, the coconuts had already run out, so no long queue in the photo.
Do you see the chocolate fondue? Now that reminds me of desserts!
But this post is already too long! So I shall talk about desserts in the next post, if you don't mind.
Besides Japanese food, Tenji also serves a variety of Chinese, Korean and Western food too! I will blog about that in the next post. Also, in my next post, you will know my conclusion - whether Tenji or Jogoya is the better Japanese buffet restaurant, so stay tuned.
Sayonara and have a happy weekend! : )
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