Hamanoya Japanese Restaurant @ Marina Square Review

A few days later, I am still thinking of their rice (but can't return for it because Bro doesn't like the food there).  It is authentic Japanese rice.  I like it even better than Yayoiken, although Bro thinks Yayoiken's rice is more flavorful.

At the door, while we looked at their menu with a waitress attending us, a waiter came out to say they specialize in grilled stuff.

While I'm not a fan of grilling or BBQing, their menu looked interesting with rice meals and affordable enough for us to try. So, we walked in a few days ago on a weekday.

There's a flyer that prints this restaurant on 1 side and Hifumi on the other side. So I'm guessing these 2 belong to the same company.

Service @ Hamanoya is excellent. The main waiter (captain/asst manager?) actually knelt down to our table level when taking our orders. Very polite man when replying to our questions.

After he left, a waiter came over to present us with 3 wet, small, dead fish decorated a little around with raddish slices and a few yellow plastic flowers. I couldn't take my eyes off the 2nd one that had a brown body with an oblongish head with little spikes along the top and a sad white open eye looking at me. Christ.

I looked at the waiter wondering why he brought it over.  It's a rather sick presentation.

After some elaboration on his part, I came to understand that it was the catch of the day that they would grill for us if we chose.  I assumed the presentation was to show that the display was fresh.

Rather disgusted inwardly, I acknowledged his explanation and said we wouldn't be grilling those and he went away.

We were then served a small charcoal grill on our table, the waiter first making an exaggerated show of dipping 2 sticks of meat in a sauce before putting it on the grill.

The meat ... I recognized the stretch of it, the shape of a shell even though there wasn't any shell, that said it was unmistakably snail/Mollusc.

The waiter informed that it was complimentary. I asked if it was chicken meat and a Japanese sushi counter guy came over to explain it was whelk and spelt it.

Whelk is a sea snail. The sort that clings to rocks and people eat it by steaming it and sucking out the meat. 

With that amount of meat on the sticks, it should be rather large snails to supply it.

I could only look at it but not bring myself to eat it.  I think the restaurant should not serve complimentary food like this. If it's complimentary, at least serve something usual like chicken meat, not something that only connoiseurs would appreciate.

I wondered if it was stuff that couldn't be sold and thus had to be presented as complimentary to get it off/out.

We didn't know how long to leave the sticks on the grill until I asked that main waiter. He replied very politely that actually there was no need to grill so long (or at all) because it's already done.  It can be eaten raw.

Raw snail?

As I said, I don't know what the restaurant management is thinking.

Nevertheless, Bro was hungry, the food we ordered hadn't arrived (we just ordered). After hearing what the waiter said, he took a stick and tried the meat while I looked on and asked how it tasted.

He said it tasted somewhat rubbery (probably because we left it too long on the grill), but otherwise tasteless. Just taste the sauce only. A little is fine, but it got to be too much (too gross) and he abandoned it after eating 1 stick and a little of the other stick.

For our orders, I got the Chicken Karage. Bro got the Oyakodon. While I liked my rice and karage with the sweet sauce on it, Bro didn't like his.

He said he much preferred Yayoiken's Oyakodon. I think with the snail inside him, he wasn't hungry anymore and that probably skewed his taste for the Oyakodon he ordered. 

My Karage came with miso soup that had a little Salmon skin with meat attached. The Salmon meat probably floated away and wasn't in my soup. Nice touch to have Salmon as part of the stock, but the soup loses to the Salmon miso soup that was offered free to us some time back at the sushi shop at Vivocity (the shop is still there but changed name. Back then, the waiter and cook were very good to us when we used to visit. One night we came for sushi and the waiter gave us each a generous portion of Salmon miso soup that he said was the remainder for the day. It had generous amounts of Salmon meat). 

For drinks, we ordered just water. ^_^

Overall, I would go back for Chicken Karage and rice. The meat was lean. But since Bro isn't keen on returning, I probably wouldn't also unless I really must have that rice.