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You know what’s delicious?
Pork fat.
I know, I know, I tell the world I don’t eat pork and here I am raving about pork fat. But,when you’re confronted by melting fat on a charcoal fire like this:
How can you resist?!?!
This magical melting meat can be found at Tajimaya Japanese Charcoal Grill at Vivo City.
It’s a pricy Japanese buffet eatery next to a Shabu Shabu restaurant. Real hole in the wall, if you didn’t know any better, you’d walk right past it. But on weekends and Friday nights, the place is packed to the brim. My suggestion: make a reservation. The yukata clad waitress will turn you away if you come walking by hoping for a taste of the smoky deliciousness.
The food
It has a curious menu, one ala carte, one buffet – which is only available at the restaurant for viewing. And unlike other buffet restaurants, you don’t wander around the restaurant, instead you wave your hand, point out to the 10 different items on the menu and order things like this:
Pardon the shoddy camera work, we were too excited and just had to dig into the juicy pieces of meat. You know how some places have menus with pictures of mouth-watering meat but they usually come out sad and limp? Not Tajimaya. This heavenly restaurant serves true-to-picture glorious slabs of meat piled onto large plates waiting to be devoured. – I know I sound crazy. But I love food.
Everything is literally free flow. There’s a menu of about 20 items and you just call to order. We’re talking angus beef, pork loin, tenderloin, beef loin, chicken meat, sashimi (both tuna and salmon), tiger prawns, shishamo, squid, vegetables. The only downside would be trying to flag a waiter and waiting for your plates of raw food to come. The great thing about this way of serving is that you’re gauranteed fresh food all the time and you never have to fight with grubby auntie hands.
Once you’re done making your choices the charcoal grill, placed snugly in the centre of your table is fired up and you know it’s ready to go.
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| Look at those glowing pieces of charcoal! |
So start laying out your pieces like so:
We started out healthy and grilled corn and more… Then we had a taste of the meat and our “healthy” eats turned into this-is-to-delicious-more-meat-now.
Some sashimi were grilled, tons of beef (cause I don’t really like pork.) and of course the fresh, huge prawns.
Then Abel started getting suspicious, “babe… why is it we’ve only been eating beef..?”
“I ordered it already! It’s just taking a long time..” I said, digging into my delicious sashimi and beef and avoiding his eyes.
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| I made the image larger so you can admire the glistening crispy bits. |
“Can you please order pork. Now.” Said hangry (hungry AND angry) boyfriend. 🙁 “Alright.” And so we ordered pork. And it melted. Like so:
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| Please note glistening edges of fat marinated in the sweet sweet nectar of the heavens. |
Truth was. I found myself enjoying the pork too. I BETRAYED MYSELF. But yeah. It was pretty delicious.
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| Like this super delicious prawns. |
And as with all delicious things, you need a carb to go with it. But not just any carb, garlic fried rice:
The savoury rice was topped with crunchy garlic bits – not burnt, crunchy – and added that saltiness you need to balance out the sweetness of the seafood and caramalised beef… ah.. it was amazing..
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| yumyumyumyum GOBBLE. |
Overall
Food is fantastic. But the last time I was here it was a few months ago, so I don’t know if the standard is still there. Service, can be better – there’s just too few waiters and waitresses! I don’t blame them. But the ones who served us were lovely people. Price-wise, be prepared to shell out at least $68 per person.
Tajimaya Japanese Charcoal Grill
1 Harbourfront Walk
#01-102/103 Vivo City
S(098585)
Tel: 6377-0070
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