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| Spicy Tuna Roll |
Searching for a decent sushi restaurant, I checked my Yelp app to see what’s good. The best ratings led me to Kotobuki Japanese Restaurant, conveniently located in downtown Stamford.
Kotobuki is a small restaurant with simple decor. Open for lunch from 12 to 2.30pm; Dinner from 5.30 to 10-ish.
I grabbed a window seat for lunch, and ordered a bottle of Kirin, a spicy tuna roll with mayonnaise, tonkatsu, and my brother ordered a Tempura don.
The spicy tuna roll was decent. The tuna was fresh, but the spiciness was lacking. Also a positive – they did not O.D. on the mayo. Some other Japanese restaurants are notorious for that.
The tonkatsu is breaded and fried pork, served with katsu sauce and white rice. The tonkatsu was good, nothing different from any other tonkatsu that I’ve ordered at other places. I’ve actually had better elsewhere, and for less than what they charged – $9.95. I was intrigued by the noodles and vegetables that was also on my plate. The noodles resembled linguine, and was dressed with light oil and black pepper. I’m not sure why they even bothered to serve this with my meal. Maybe some udon or soba would be a better substitute.
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| Tonkatsu |
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| What’s this paired with my tonkatsu? Linguine? |
The tempura don, $9.95, was not impressive – the tempura was soggy and so was the rice. My brother and I agreed – they should have had the oil at a higher tempura-ture (just kidding – temperature) to achieve the crunchiness of the tempura batter. Normally there is a small side bowl of tempura dipping sauce, but they decided to just douse up the tempura and rice instead.
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| Tempura Don – shrimp and vegetable tempura served in a bowl over rice w/ Japanese pickles and miso soup |
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| Shrimp and vegetable tempura |
Kotobuki Japanese Restaurant
457 Summer St
Stamford, CT 06901
www.kotobukijapaneserestaurant.com
