Todai

[Ian_Lee]

Todai is a popular Japanese seafood buffet restaurant chain that springs across the US with its concentration mostly in Southern California.

It has also opened a branch in Hong Kong and that is the only Todai outside US and Canada.

They offer such perks like free meal if you go dine on your birthday. They even have waitresses coming by your table to sing birthday song.

But lately I seldom go dine at Todai even though it is kind of a bargain considering the variety of food that they offer at such price (crab leg and lobster and ..... for US$25 at dinner).

Once when the restaurant was really busy with dozens of customers waiting in front of the crab leg serving table, I saw them opening boxes of crab legs and unload those frozen food right on the table with ice attached on the legs.

When I devoured them, somehow I had a feeling that I returned to the stone age when our ancestors ate unprocessed food right after hunting!

[xuezhongwen]

one more thing you may notice at Todai is a lot of the waiters/waitresses all speak Chinese, at least that's true in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[TSkillet]

ugh. . . todai. I can't think of a worse trend than all of the Chinese-owned and operated sushi places here in the US - not only todai, but here in houston, you'd be hard pressed to find a japanese owner or chef in any of the many sushi restaurants.

suffice to say, I try to keep my sushi excursions to when I can go LA, San Francisco, or New York.

[bhchao]

ugh. . . todai. I can't think of a worse trend than all of the Chinese-owned and operated sushi places here in the US -

I agree. You can get full in Todai, but the quality cannot compare to the authentic Japanese food found elsewhere.

TSkillet, have you been to Nobu in New York?

[TSkillet]

I haven't been to Nobu . . .yet. . . maybe when I pay off my mortgage or something. Heheh. Diverting from the topic at hand - if I'm going to spend $200 per person on a meal in New York - I'd be at Per Se.