Sandaya Fisher Mall is a gem of a restaurant on the 3rd floor of Fisher Mall, one floor right below the cinemas.
It is a Japanese yakiniku or grill restaurant, but not only: you can have a hotpot meal, sushi and sashimi, a rice bowl/donburi, or ramen; there's even a shabu-shabu choice or two. (If the menu were posted outside the restaurant, maybe more potential diners would know this and be enticed to come in.)
Plus, there's a yakiniku-and-drinks buffet ( 1 cut beef, 1 cut of pork, and chicken) at tiered prices starting at P495 for weekday lunch.. It's a good deal!
So if you're not going to grill, you can order a good shrimp tempura, tuna makis, and fresh sashimi like salmon - or super-fresh sea urchin (uni), whose sweet, briny flavor does not require any acidity from calamansi.
I was pretty impressed with the wide selection of high quality meats for yakiniku. Different types of meats and seafood are combined together for a set, if you don't select by cut, or by animal (beef, pork, chicken). A plate per cut of meat will have about six slices. My estimate is, you and a friend will get full if you order three plates, plus something else (soup, sushi, etc).
I can also vouch for the smoke-free grill experience, which matters to me, since elsewhere I've experienced breathing in so much smoke to the point of feeling dizzy and faint (and therefore not returning). Not here. The exhaust system in the restaurant and the grill system itself here is very good.
From the US, the premium cuts include US short ribs; chuck tender; short plate, which is a belly cut; as well as the currently popular and inexpensive "hanging tender" cut.
Then there is a "Ferrari-Lamborghini" selection of Japanese beef cuts and pork - wagyu premium sirloin, wagyu inside steak (or harami), and Kurobuta pork sausages.
Two thumbs up for all of these delicious cuts! We cooked each cut one by one in gradual progression, until we had the wagyu. Each, regardless of price, was seriously incredible and made me appreciate the different parts of beef we were sampling. I didn't know one could grill chuck, for instance, while I love short ribs.
From the pork selection, the Kurobuta sausages are equally outstanding. The meat caramelizes and become sweet with the cooking.
We also tried grilled ox-tongue (lengua), which has a distnct chewiness I liked; and a mutsuni soup of miso with meat and tripe - a Japanese version of callos. The big surprise was grilled uni, which is cooked in a cast-iron plate over the grill until the juices evaporate. It was my first time to taste grilled uni ever..
If you can blow some money on wagyu sirloin, you will not regret it. It is the real thing, and you'll know it from your first bite. It's maddeningly tender, with a rich, buttery flavor. Let the staff help you set the temperature on the grill and cook it without haste on low-medium heat.
Overall, the beef cuts are so well marinaded they need little adorning from the dipping sauces; you can eat as is. However, I think some of the meats we tried were over-marinaded, like the hanging tender, which was outright salty.
I wouldn't say P500 is an accurate measure of what you'll spend if you eat yakiniku a la carte, in which case I believe you're moving closer to at least P800-1,200; more, if you are going to order Japanese wagyu.
Sandaya Fisher Mall is a wow experience and an asset for Quezon City. Should you find yourself here to shop or watch a movie, add to this your list of great food options.
It was a meal with many highlights, and I'd like to thank Zomato and Sandaya Yakiniku for hosting our dinner.
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