Hamamori - South Coast Plaza Restaurant Week

I had been indulging myself with a lot of food for the past few days,
Wait, isn't that the case for me all the time?
Ok, but we are talking about a different scenario here.

South Coast Plaza had a Restaurant Week event starting from July 25th to August 3rd,
That means you can enjoy a nice four course dinner meal at several participating restaurants for $40,
It's such a good deal since usually the price of eating at those places costs way more than $40.

The participating restaurants were the following:
Antonello Ristorante
Charlie Palmer at Bloomingdale's
Hamamori Restaurant - Lounge
Marche Modeme
Pinot Provence
Quattro Caffe
Scott's Seafood Grill & Bar
SAVANNAH Supper Club & Lounge
Royal Khyber Fine Indian Cuisine

Me and my friends decided to give Hamamori and Palmer a try,
Here're some of my intakes for Hamamori-


The restaurant can be divided by three areas,
Outside dining table area, inside dining table area, and sushi bar area-


Everything looks nice and fancy, you can even see the bridge that connects the two shopping centers through the window-

That probably one of the reasons why I was surprised to see Hamamori actually used disposable chopsticks instead of some other kind of fancy "real" chopsticks.
(By the way, my friend made that "fancy" chopsticks holder)-


Some refreshments are always welcome before our meal-

You guys have to spare with me here,
I didn't get a chance to either take a note or take a picture for all the dish descriptions,
Plus I don't know how much I can remember after these "refreshments."
But I'll definitely try my best to describe what exactly went into my stomach.

Here's our first course,
Kobe beef carpaccio with kumquats and salad-


Not a big fan of kumquats,
But the beef itself was pretty good, the natural beefy aroma was flowing on my pallet even though it was just a tiny thin slice.
Second course, it's a trio of....m....appetizers?....something like that. Fried asparagus coated with rice crackers-

My friend's comment: way too much rice crackers that you can hardly taste the asparagus.
Spring roll with crab meat-

Meat ball with bits of foie gras stuffing, placed on fried gobo (burdock)-


I know I was supposed to eat the meat and foie gras together,
But I ended up picking out some of the froi gras and enjoy them in one big bite...
M....I...love....foie gras....

Third course is sushi plate,
From left to right: tuna, scallop (with sea salt and pepper), salmon with grated daikon and yuzu sauce, albacore with fried garlic slice, and tamago-


Salmon was my favorite among them all,
However, the flavor from grated daikon was a little bit too overpowering that it kind of took away the natural taste from salmon,
But hey, I love grated daikon with yuzu sauce!

My friends all picked tuna as their first choice,
Mmm...I really can't remember what it tastes like now,
But I know that I was only ok with tuna nigiri,
However, albacore with fried garlic slice was pretty good,
At first I thought that the aroma of fried garlic might be too much for sushi,
But it actually helped bringing out the sweetness flavor from the fish.

And here's our last course, the main dish, which you can choose between lamb or black cod-


The lamb and the black cod were ok, nothing too special about those.


I like the way they used lotus root for garnish, Gonna copy that and bring it to my dish sometimes.
Next time I'll try to post any food-related specials on my blog as soon as possible,
So maybe you guys can go give it a try too,
I was pretty busy these days......
(Spent approximately 40% of the time munching piles of food....it helps to reduce my stress..)

Overall Rating: 7

South Coast Plaza
3333 Bristol Street
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
http://www.southcoastplaza.com/

Hamamori
3333 Bristol Street. Suite 320
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 850 - 0880
http://hamamori.com/default.htm