Hanamizuki Japanese Restaurant

Hanamizuki Japanese Restaurant

Ry's Rating: 7

***WARNING***

Bad quality Iphone pictures are in this post! I promise to start bringing my nice camera out with me! This picture below came from Urban Spoon. :)

I’m starting something new on my blog, it will be called Authentic Foods of Orlando and I will rate them from 1-10. We are so lucky to have so much cultural in our city and I really haven’t taken advantage of it. I’ve found a couple excellent spots but I find J and I always getting stuck in the same old rut. Last night I got a wild hair and we decided to try something new, very new. I went through a list of different Japanese restaurants in my Orlando Home and Leisure Magazine and this paragraph caught my eye: Hanamizuki’s menu features Kyoto-style cooking, which tends to be more elegant and formal than many of the dishes served in most American Japanese restaurants. It also focuses more on fresh vegetables and seafood other than sushi, although that is also available. Don’t be surprised to find a predominantly Japanese clientele here. No small wonder when the restaurants website is written in Japanese.

So J and I trucked it to Hanamizuki’s last night and found it was hidden in a little shopping center nestled between a vacant GREEK spot and CHINA BUFFET. When we walked in we found a few tables occupied, as we walked by I studied their plates trying to see what I should order. Nothing looked familiar. The menu was at least 8 pages long, I was like a kid in a candy store. I wanted to try everything but narrowed it down to the following:

For our salad we ordered Ika Su, a squid salad marinated in vinegar soy sauce dressing, I rated this 4 stars. This was my least favorite, the texture was off because it was raw…I like my squid firm this was like eating jelly fish/tongue. It really didn’t have much flavor and maybe the squid should have marinated longer in the sauce. Our appetizer was Hanamizuki Special Calamari, with was thick pieces of squid deep fried with a seven vegi sauce…it was delish…HELLO of course anything with the name deep fried in a dish is always great, right?

Meat before it was cooked on the red hot stone..

For our main courses J ordered steak and seafood Ishiyaki style, which means meat and vegi’s cook on a red hot stone at your table. They served this with a ponzu and radish sauce. This dish was very simple, fresh meats cooked on a hot stone with a sauce. I like more complex dishes myself because J and I could have made this at home. He also wanted to try some udon noodles, which were served chilled with seaweed and scallions.

chilled udon noodles

I chose Gyu Negimavaki, green onions and roe rolled in paper thin sliced beef and broiled with teriyaki sauce..this was my favorite and I rate this a 9. It was yummy and the sticky rice was cooked perfectly. I would diffidently get this dish again. THAT’S IT!

P.S. We went a watched Eclipse afterwards and I REALLY enjoyed the movie. Everyone I have talked to disliked it but me…don’t tell anyone but Jim even liked it. Gotta go!