Kyoto Japanese Restaurant - An Afternoon Play-date and Surprised Dinner

Yesterday was Friday, daddy went home from school and hurried us to go out for some play-date at park. So we went to Emily Murphy park and played with the kids at the playground.

They only have small playground there, and kids were quickly bored playing the same thing over and over. So we decided to leave after 20min playing.

Then we stopped at William Hawrelak park, where the kids ran around chasing birds and ducks.

It was quite amusing how the kids ran around and screamed to the max. I was screaming too to warn them not to get too close to the water, since I did not want them to fall into the water and get soaked. We left when they got tired with the birdies and duckies.

Daddy drove around the town and suddenly make a turn to an unexpected place, Kyoto a Japanese Restaurant. This is a small, busy, but fancy Japanese restaurant. I love the entrance where they have this calming fountain.

And the familiar interior items next to the reception and sushi counter.

They prepare fresh sushi and maki right in front of us, which I thought was very nice. And yes, the waitress and all the restaurant employees got to wear yukata, except for the reception (No idea why they don't).

They have two different seating areas. The ones with tatami and the ones with regular tables and chairs. Since we were with the kids, it would be so much easier for us to sit on the regular table and chairs. (Unfortunately I did not take a picture of the tatami one, since the place was so busy at that time).

So at first we were offered some drinks, our choice went for hot tea (indeed it was a very good one) and apple juice.

They have various kinds of appetizers, sushi and maki and cone, some udon soup, soba, rice dishes, and of course some dessert. They also have special menu of the day (we did not try though).

After the drinks we were served with some miso soup and one small plate of salad (I think this salad goes with daddy's order). To my note, the miso soup was very tasty, if only they put some seaweed, that would be perfect! It only has some tiny tofu and spring onion. But still it was delicious.

The salad was yummy too, it was lettuce, tomato, cucumber and celery with some tangy sesame dressing.

It was a bit hard for me to choose what to have for dinner, since I was not really hungry, but I know I got to eat something. So my choice was this tempura udon. The tempura consists of prawn, squid, sweet potato, eggplant and cucumber. The broth was tasty enough, but the tempura was bland.

Here is daddy's choice, chicken teriyaki dinner. He gave excellent mark for this dish. Jordan and I got to taste the chicken too, and indeed it was delicious.

We also had some maki (California and Dynamite rolls) and sushi (Smoked Salmon and BBQ Eel). As for me, the maki taste so so (or I might be too full by the time they served these), but the sushi were sooo good and fresh.

This is the dynamite maki with prawn tempura inside.

Overall, we were content with what we had for the amount of money we had to spend and definitely we'll be back again. So if you are in town, I recommend this Japanese restaurant, it is worth to try. Be prepared for some extra money to spend (compared to food court or franchise class restaurants).

Happy Mother's Day!

Kyoto Japanese Cuisine

Downtown: 10128 109St Edmonton, AB T5J 1M7

7804201750

University: 8709 109St Edmonton, AB T6G 2L5 (we went to this one)

7804146066

Ginseng Korean Restaurant Edmonton

I am here again for sorta restaurant review. We celebrated daddy's birthday last Saturday by dining in a Korean restaurant named Ginseng. It is situated in South side of the town. I'll give you the address and contact number in detail at the end of this post. We have been there before, and we love the foods there. For our first visit we felt it was a bit pricey, but did not feel it that way on our second visit though (no idea of what we ordered on our first visit that we ended up paying lot more than the second one). This restaurant have buffet-all you can eat- menu and a la carte too, but seems like most of the people coming for the buffet where you can choose the foods and cook them right on your table yourself.

It is a heaven for meat lovers, they have quite various meats to grill, such as marinated raw chicken, beef, pork and unmarinated seafoods (shrimp, squid, mussels). They have sweet and spicy marinating. Namely classic bbq beef (bulgogi), bbq beef short ribs (galbi gui), beef in sesame oil (jumulleok), spicy pork (daeji bulgogi), spicy chicken (dahk galbi) are there to pick. Personally Chris and I love the spicy chicken, the kids love the sweet chicken and shrimp (we did not try the pork at all, no particular reason, just not a big fan of it).
They also give us some condiments, soy sauce and hot sauce. And as you expected, each table has the grill in the middle, big exhaust fan on top of it (but seems was not functioning since you still can see smoke and haze all around you and you get out of the restaurant smell smokey..) and of course you are given some tongs and scissors to cut the meats. Oh yeah, they change the grill once it is burnt and too smokey.

Other than raw meats, you can find fresh sliced vegetable too. Too bad, we did not take any, so no picture here. You may also like to get some cooked foods on the buffet line there. While you are waiting for the raw meats to be cooked, you can enjoy sesame house salad (I found out that night it was too much sesame oil, which give strong taste-aroma), California rolls (Jordan loves them, for me it's just ordinary rolls), deep-fried dumplings (yummy and crispy, very good to go with the hot sauce), seaweed soup (in my opinion, it was no taste at all), spicy soup (we did not try this one), kim chi (just so so), bean sprout salad/sukju namul (good), fried rice (looks like Chinese style one, Chris tasted it and he said it's so so), steamed rice, and weirdly enough Shanghai noodles..we were not sure why this noodle was there so we did not try it.
For drinks, there are various soft drinks and green tea included in the buffet menu. Other than that you may order with extra charge. We chose ice tea and green tea with honey.

This was my plate..with kim chi, bean sprout salad, grilled shrimps and dumplings.

Jordan got to taste the shrimp first and he loves them.

The only thing left out in the buffet menu is dessert. You can not find any of it other than fresh cut fruits (orange and apple that night). This is how our table look like after that 1.5hour smokey battle. For 29$/person, it is worth to visit!

This post would not complete without the picture of our birthday hero..(with our spoilled Princess)

An extra picture of kiddos splashing water in front of our house before leaving to the restaurant. What a joy to welcome the spring!

Ginseng Sushi and BBQ Restaurant

Edmonton, Alberta

9261 34 Ave NW

780-450-3330