it’s K-Rad y0!   Starting from scratch

When we purchased our oven in late October, Telford mall was having a promotion where, if you spend a certain amount at the mall, you would be treated to a free dinner at one of their restaurants. We picked that day to buy our oven, because we like Pokka Cafe. If you haven’t heard of it, Pokka Cafe is a Japanese restaurant chain based in Singapore. They offer a wide variety of Japanese style food, from noodles to steaks to izakaya style food. The flavours are pretty authentic, but you pay for it. Dishes are at least $100 ($14 CAD) each, and a coffee is about $40 ($5.50 CAD). To give  you an idea, we rarely spend more than $40 each for an entire meal (hey, it’s one of the reasons we live here!)

Anyway, we endured a 45 minute lineup to get a chance to enjoy a $600 ($82 CAD) meal for two. We recognized all the dishes from the regular menu, including a nice looking tenderloin that I had often eyed when dining there (it’s about $200 for a 100g slice of beef, so I never ordered it). Mostly though, I just wanted a chance to have their awesome coffee for free.

I have to say though, had this been my first ever visit to Pokka Cafe, I probably wouldn’t go there again. Here’s how our meal went:

First of all, we gave the waitress our voucher, and she took our order. We told her how we wanted our steak done, etc. Before she left, we thought she forgot to take our drink order (a free drink is included). She looked at us strange when we asked for our drinks, and then asked if we would like our dessert first too. Huh?

Soup: Pumpkin Soup with Crab “Sticks”

I didn’t have high hopes for this dish, as the gift voucher listed it as “Crab Sticks”. Since crabs usually don’t come in “stick” form, I just assumed they meant the concoction that is created by mixing sea bream or pollock with starch, water, and artificial flavouring. But to my surprise, they actually used real crab meat! Unfortunately, each bowl of soup had but a tiny shred of meat in it. Not enough to even describe as being a “bite” of crab. The soup tasted diluted and wasn’t very hot.

Before we could even get started on our soup, the first appetizer came:

Appetizer: Baked Oysters

People who frequent Canadian and American Japanese restaurants will surely have tried Oyster Motoyaki. A delicious dish, if not at all Japanese, where an oyster is baked in its own shell after being topped with Japanese mayonnaise. It is normally one of my favourites, delicious with a few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice. See this page for an oyster motoyaki recipe to see what I mean.

Unfortunately, the baked oysters served at Pokka aren’t quite up to those standards:

By the time we finished our soup, these were cold and hard. There was hardly any sauce at all, although the oyster part tasted OK.

We were still finishing our soup when they brought out the pasta.

Pasta: Sauteed Spaghetti with Unagi

It was quite tasty (I only had a little bit, not the biggest pasta eater these days). This is probably a dish Andrea would order during any other visit to Pokka, and she enjoyed it. Too bad it was cold by the time we finished our soup and oysters.

We were just finishing our soup (yes, the very first dish brought to the table) when the main course came. That’s right, within 5 or 10 minutes, we had every single dish sitting at our table, waiting to be eaten (and getting cold while waiting). We didn’t even have time to ask them to slow down – they just came out one by one. It was ridiculous! Now, Chinese restaurants aren’t known for their meal pacing (if you’ve ever been to one, you have probably been in the situation where one person is finished their meal while another still hasn’t received theirs – especially if one orders a baked dish or something). But this was ridiculous! A set meal, and they brought out the entire set (minus dessert) before we even finished the soup!

Main Course: Beef Loin Filet in “Wine Sauce”:

It was incredibly small, but the meat was delicious. Mine was slightly overcooked (we asked for medium-rare, which the waitress confirmed as being “40%” rather than our other choice of “70%” which sounds horrendously overcooked). Andrea’s was perfect though, meaning they knew how it was supposed to be cooked. The sauce had not a hint of wine flavour, or any flavour really. That was fine by me though, anything else would have masked the delicious natural beef flavour these premium cuts had.

Finally, after we finished all our lukewarm food, out came dessert:

Dessert: Tofu and Gelatin with a couple Blueberries

If you are a fan of mild desserts, then this one is for you. Unflavoured tofu with unflavoured gelatin, and a couple sweetened blueberries. This would have been fine if they had included more than three individual blueberries (Andrea got 3.5).

Like I said, if this was my first visit to Pokka, there’s no way I would have come back. We’ve been there three or four times, and have always had good food and good service. I think they may be just getting tired of serving these free full course meals (they gave away hundreds that day, and apparently everyone is redeeming them this week, as the promotion ends tomorrow).

Thankfully I didn’t have to pay one cent for this meal. If I did, I think I would have told them to take all the dishes back, recook them, and bring them out at a proper pace.

The coffee was really good though, as usual, so I was satisfied overall