Dokoro Matsudo

Right before Christmas I went to this nice Japanese place with my friend, and yes this is quite late but I finally got time to write it up.

Sushi Dokoro Matsudo is located on the 8th floor of an office tower, which is the same place where you can find the famous tonkatsu shop Tonkichi. More and more people come to this tower to look for good food but for now you won't be seeing any queues. The day we came here was the night before Christmas Eve and it was already 1930, but the shop was pretty empty with less than 10 people. It is indeed a quiet place for some wonderful Japanese food.

This restaurant gets most of the food directly from Japan, and with more than 20 kinds of Japanese wines, it is not surprising to see quite some Japanese customers here.

Even more, if you come here early in the evening, you can enjoy their sushi buffet set. For $298 a person, you can eat as much as you want, choosing from more than 30 types of sushi, together with tempura and dessert which comes with the set. Amazing!

This time we didn't do buffet since we didn't really want to stuff ourselves. Finally we settled down with one sushi set to share, adding some side dishes to complete the whole course. When we were still reading the menu, the starter was already on the table. Don't miss this very first dish of the mushroom starter. It costs HK$25! Holy! Thank God I finished off the whole thing.

The sashimi came first, and it was very fresh. We were lucky because they just had a half-price discount on this big sashimi sets. It was of medium size and already got quite some different kinds for you to have a taste of everything.

The fish sashimi was very fresh like just cut from the fish. There was no awful smell that was signature from the refrigerator. Some people did not like the fat in the sashimi but for me, that is the key thing to show how good that the sashimi is. Here, the amount of fat is just right, not too much to make you throw up and just enough to add some soft texture to the slices.

The uni (sea urchin) was remarkably good, because for many times the uni you get from other Japanese restaurants has that unpleasant fishy smell. That is the reason why I seldom have it in Hong Kong except when I am in Japan especially in Tsikiji. This time the little bowl of uni surprised me. It was just sweet and...sweet! So delicious, and the ikura creates a funny yet enjoyable mixture of tastes with the uni, since the former is salty while the latter is sweet. Wonderful.

The other non-fish sashimi was all good, and I must say that the sashimi set was a really awesome bargain. Right after finishing off the whole plate in 15 minutes, we started the hot dishes. First it was the ox tongue skewers.

To me it had a bit too much black pepper on it, overwhelming the flavour of the meat. Still it was nicely prepared and grilled to the right point. Sometimes you can get really dry skewers due to overcooking, and you can see it is not easy to do quality skewers because the chef has to constantly keep an eye on it.

Another big hot dish came, the big scallops served in butter sauce! They were HUGE!

The final dish came and it was Fried Rice with Shrimp Eggs.

This fried rice was amazingly delicious, because it looked like typical fried rice with some asparagus slices but turned out to be an extremely tasty light course in the meal! As you may know, Japanese rice is round and sticky, and it is not easy to make fried rice with it. Adding oil may help but you will need quite a lot of oil, and most importantly no one will find shiny rice appealing and delicious. This fried rice however isn't oily at all, and the combination of asparagus and shrimp eggs is very interesting. The dish is light and refreshing, but not too light that bores your taste buds. The shrimp eggs act like salt in here but tastes more than just saltiness. This is extremely well done, and is a perfect finale for this pre-Christmas dinner.

The quality of food no doubt confirms my next visit to this place, and with the quiet and relaxing ambience, this is a perfect restaurant for anyone who wants to get away from the busy city life and has some undisturbed private time for fine Japanese dining experience.