Watami 和民

My friend and I waited outside this restaurant for around twenty minutes before we get to sit down. Business was really good and I saw many tables have ordered their brownies, so decided to try it as well. The texture of the brownies is moist and firm. THe chocolate flavour is quite thick and also not too sweet. The chocolate ice cream goes really well with the brownies too. Even though the price is quite high, but because it taste so good, I will still come back again for it.

2013-03-04

SGD 20(Other)

Watami is one of those Jap places in Orchard that I like to frequent. Other than the sometimes lack of staff (a.k.a very hard to get staff attention) problem, the food is quite good. If you like beef, try the gyu steak. It's obly $15 plus for a tray of tender lovely beef. No rice though. So you get a hot plate and you basically cook the steak to how you like it. I usually cooked it medium so it's still soft and succulent. This is a new item on the menu. Their egg with mentai sauce. It is quite a gelat dish but quite addictive. Their clam soup is rather salty. I think there may be quite a bit of MSG in this because I end up super thirsty after the meal.

2013-03-01

Served in a hot stone bowl, the smell of garlic and other spices could be smelled from far away. The beef hot stone rice bowl was really good as i love how the rice is flavoured with the garlic, onions, butter and sweet corn. The concept is a little like pepper lunch where raw beef is served with the hot steaming rice and requires the eater to mix the rice up. More beef could be added but overall love this dish!

salmon sashimi $9.80
salmon flesh is thick and fresh. They have many types of sashimi there and they are all rather fresh too..pizza is served japanese style. this is called the wafu pizza. The pizza crust is very thin and crispy. This dish is a hit for everyone! It is worth a try, especially if you have not tried japanese pizza before.

The ambience is cozy too, sofa seats are spacious.

SGD 20(Lunch)

Warm melted cheese covering danish pastry, prawns, sausages and sweet cherry tomatoes are something to die for. Love the hot melted cheese that has a strong cheesy aroma to it. The cheese is really addictive and it makes the plain broccoli taste really good.

Other than the savory fondue, Watami also has a sweet fondue. The chocolate fondue. The chocolate has an orange taste and orange peel can be found inside the warm chocolate.

If anything else. Watami has always been notorious for long waits.
Is it just me? Or does anyone out there share the same feelings?
From the previous experience at Junction 8 and our epic hour and a half wait, I've been hard pressed to find a reason to pay them a visit.
But here I find myself, with a 45 mins wait at Ion. Friend's choice.
Not bad.
We've scaled down the wait time by half.
A step in the right direction. I don't even find myself mildly irritated about the wait.
Although my hungry friend was deeply indignant that every other group went in ahead of us because they came in numbers or 2 and 3. We had a party of 5.

Now this was pretty new to me. Something that eventually boils off to a dish resembling zosui. Bubbling pot of goodness. For a rainy day or if you're nursing a cold. Comfort food.

SGD 12(Dinner)

Watami is a Japanese restaurant.
The decoration inside is japanese style.
The dim lighting make the environment nice.
But,there are always fullhouse.
We need to be wait outside.This is beef shabu shabu.
They serve as a pot and with a gas stove.
They help us to open the gas to cook it.
So this dish is always hot.The soup is not bad,and i really like the ingredient that they give.This salmon don is a new dish.
The salmon taste nice with the wasabi on the top.
The ginger is also mix well with the salmon.I like the orange fish egg too,it is so juicy.
Mix all of them with the rice,make this dish special.this is chicken claypot don.
The sauce is too little,so cannot mix evenly.It taste not so nice.
If there are more sauce,it will be better.

All of the three dishes cost around $20 per dish.
The food there is quite expensive,but they are really worth of it.

$59 set meal - caesar salad, salmon sashimi, fries, tokyo gyu don, butechige nabe, udon, chicken katsu, root beer, pepsi

$8.80 - tonpeiyaki

$3.40 - hot chocolate brownie

$3.40 - matcha parfait

the queue was long, make sure you don't queue blindly, you need to take a queue number from the machine.

caesar salad was fresh and crunchy, together with the salmon sashimi which was decently thick sliced unlike the stingy ones in certain japanese restaurants. tokyo gyu don was flavourful, satisfying and the presentation with the egg was tantalising.butechige nabe (mouthful pronunciation!) hotpot, had great variety of healthy goodies, and meal was ready to eat once all is cooked to taste. chicken katsu was crispy and well fried as well as tender on the inside too!
tonpei yaki is very saucy and the presentation was a work of art! Then came the dessert of the hot chocolate brownie, was perfect and totally went well with all the savoury food i had. thick and heavenly tasting. matcha parfait was great too!

There was a lot of people, almost full house, so I guess the service staff did their best in terms of speed of service cos we did wait a little. ambient is just great. the place to be.

The Food
On Xmas eve, i decided to try Watami at ION orchard. I ordered the pork cutlet with egg sauce and mango snow mountain drink. I was surprised when the waitress came to our table with a mini-stove and a raw egg. After that, the waitress lighted up the stove and told me to open the egg and pour into the bowl with the pork cutlets. This is quite unique as this is my 1st time see pork cutlets mixed with egg on a stove. The pork cutlets are crispy and tender and the sauce is very nice and rice in taste.
I also liked the mango snow mountain drink as the mangoes are fresh and refreshing. Sweetness is also just nice!!

The Service
As I went on Xmas eve hence the queue is quite long but we were quickly ushered to our seat as soon as empty seats are available. The waitresses are friendly and cheerful while taking our orders.

The Ambience
The ambience is cosy & sofa seats are comfortable with acceptable noise level.

The Price
Reasonably priced at $11.80 for the pork cutlets and $5.80 for the mango snow mountain drink and price is actually cheaper compared to other Japanese restaurants.

Overall
I will definitely come back again and highly recommended to try this since it has a lot of variety to food and dessert to choose from.

2012-12-24

Had lunch here with a colleague and we both ordered the Tonkatsu Ramen Set Lunch ($15.80++) which came with a serving of salad with wafu dressing and Negitoro Sushi. The ramen was average and there wasn't anything special about it. I liked the sesame wafu salad dressing but then again, it is your average Japanese sesame dressing that you can get off the shelves from the supermarket. The Negitoro Sushi was a big failure though. The sushi rice was overcooked which made the sushi soggy and the tuna wasn't that fresh either. Overall, the food is barely passable but if you're looking for a convenient Japanese restaurant to have a quick lunch and fill your stomach then Watami is for you. For the same price, you can definitely get better Japanese food at Sushi Tei.

2012-12-13

SGD 20(Lunch)

A lunch date at Watami Restaurant The total spending was $61 from the 6 satisfied dishes which include Konbu Dashi Nabe, Ishiyaki Bibimbap, Crispy Chicken Wing, Teppen Bou Gyoza and H/Choco Brownie Both of us indeed have a huge appetite. The steamboat that we have ordered is together with different seafood, beef, chicken, pork and vegetables and another set of pot is rice with some sauce together with cheese. I like their soup based which I find it to my liking - lightly sweet taste. However, out of all the 6 dishes that we had ordered, crispy chicken wing was quite a disappointment. The fried chicken was very lean and nothing special which you can see from the third picture. The dessert H/Choco Brownie was delicious, it comes with 3 small pieces of brownie, vanilla ice cream and chocolate fordue to be poured on them. We had a satisfied meal and great service that the service staff had provided us.

2012-08-18

I had visited Watami many times as the Reastaurent has a lots of variety of Japanese food to chose from.

This time, we had ordered the pizza from the menu. The biscuit of the pizza tasted crispy and cruncy. I like it very much. The saltiness of the biscuit tasted just nice too.

I had already forgotten the name of pizza we ordered, but I do remember that there was potato, bacon and some corn on top of the pizza. The taste of the pizza was nice.

I have never thought of the combination of corns and potato in one dish can be so delicious, until I have tried this dish at Watami. The portion is really generous and for those who do not want to eat the main course, you may want to just have this as a meal, which is really delicious and nutritional too. The sweet corns are very crunchy and the natural sweetness of it certainly has enhance this dish and the potato is also very soft and moist as well. Simply yummy and easy to eat, which is suitable for all age group.

2012-07-17

After a satisfying meal at Watami, do not forget to order their dessert, especially the brownies with chocolate ice cream,as it is simply delicious and make you crave for more. The chocolate brownie is thick and moist in texture and is served hot to you which is even more tasty. The chocolate ice cream is thick and creamy. The combination of both items are simply delicious and will definitely be able to impress you.

2012-07-06

Was quite upset by this cup of dessert as I have quite a high expectation on it as the presentation looks great and the portion looks quite generous. However was really unhappy that within this whole desssert, the bottom part of the dessert cup is filled with almost more than fifty percent of the normal corn cereal which are very dry in texture and does not blend in to this dessert at all. The green tea ice cream is also small in portion which is not really that satisfying at all.

2012-07-23