Jump to content
  • Welcome to the eG Forums, a service of the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The Society is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of the culinary arts. These advertising-free forums are provided free of charge through donations from Society members. Anyone may read the forums, but to post you must create a free account.

Minado Japanese Seafood Buffet Restaurant


mascarpone

Recommended Posts

I had lunch today at Minado, an all-you-can-eat seafood place located at 6 East 32nd Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues in Manhattan. It is a Korean mangaged restaurant in Koreatown serving Japanese-style seafood dishes. The strength of this place is the quantity and variety of sushi, seafood salads, vegetable salads, and cooked items. Minado's weakness, obviously, is its quality, which really can't be compared to other sushi restaurants due to the sheer volume of cuisine prepared. This is not to say that the sushi was hideous on the whole, and considering the type of operation Minado is, the presentation and the sushi is actually quite tolerable. :biggrin: A Japanese friend actually introduced me to Minado. She noticed that the salmon sushi was a bit watery which she attributed to freezing for preservation purposes.

Along the theme of frozen food, the desserts, particularly the bite size cakes, were slightly frozen in the center. :blink:

When we went back for seconds and thirds we tended to gravitate towards the cooked items and decided that the Teriaki beef, Tonkatsu, Salmon on a stick, barbacued pork, and vegetable salads were definitly a step up in qulaity. According to my friend, the quality of the sushi at dinner is considerably higher than at lunch.

On the tables is a list of buffet rules, one of which states that customers who waste food will be charged an additional 30% of the total of their bill.

Another weakness of Minado is the atmosphere. The place was packed!Survival of the quickest was the name of the game and I soon learned to jump when the fresh fish platters were replenished. There is really no orerly protocol when selecting from the long buffet line, just a stack of plates at either end. The result is a rather chaotic scene of aggresive diners nudging and blocking each other in oder to get the freshly made sushi much like cab drivers during rush hour.

The over all tab was $35 after tax and tip.

Edited by mascarpone (log)
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lunch Monday-Friday 11:30AM -2:30 PM $13.95

Saturday-Sunday 11:30 Am-3:00 PM $15.95

Dinner Monday-Thursday: 6-10 $23.95

Friday-Saturday: 5:30 pm-10 pm $25.95

Sunday: 5-9 $25.95

Prices are subject to change without notice.

www.minado.com

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah, actually I ate at a location of this chain recently as well. For what they are charging, it's quite a deal. Some things, like the kalbi (short ribs), the fruit crepes, and some of the sushi (I had dinner, so I can attest the quality does seem fairly high at dinner) are top notch. The various salady things, and most of the other cooked dishes are fairly sad

I actually didn't know until recently that it was part of a chain--I went to the one in Little Ferry, NJ, not the one you are reporting on. The Manhattan one has the same prices though, and I've been told the relative quality of most of the dishes is almost identical.

Actually that 30% premium rule, I thought, only applied to when people picked the higher quality fish off the top of the rice from the Nigiri preparations of sushi and leave the rice sitting behind at the buffet table.

List of Minado locations

Minado menu

Prices

Edited by jhlurie (log)

Jon Lurie, aka "jhlurie"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The casual atmosphere was what I liked most about Minado, actually, since I had dinner there with a group of almost 50. It's a fun group venue, with flexible seating and a wide range of dishes ranging from uni to chicken teriyaki. Both the brave and the cowardly will find plenty. And all-you-can-eat ain't bad.

But all the sushi tasted the same to me -- even widely different types of fish, never mind similar ones. It was fresh without having much flavor. None of the shellfish had the sweet brininess I expect of it.

I finished the meal with a marinated-salmon dish and lots of seaweed and oshitashi. Which has now spoiled restaurant hijiki for me: just like after I found dirt-cheap papadum in Indian grocery stores, now seaweed seems too silly to pay for as a side dish.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At one point - you were able to order hand rolls from the sushi chefs. These were made to order and were defnitely the best of the bunch. (I don't know if this is the case anymore - I went the week they opened - upset that Empire Korea was no longer there...)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree with the poster who thought the sushi all tasted the same. The desserts were weak, with the exception of the fruit, which seemed most friendly. The selection was great for a buffet, and I agree that it is a good value; however, being the sushi snob I am, I will never go back. The fish wasn't quite fresh, most of it had the consistency of chicken, if I may say so: not tender enough, and too chewy. The food was constantly being updated throughout the meal, but I would much rather go to an a la carte place than a buffet.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i've been to a minado chain in jersey a few times. favorite is the made to order handrolls. dinner hours are decent, though their oysters on the half-shell sucks. they douse the bivalves with this sweet stuff i can't even taste the oysters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

×
×
  • Create New...