Morimoto

So I had the opportunity to finally visit the Iron Chef, Morimoto’s restaurant this past weekend, in Philly. I heard he used to work there daily back in 2002, and his creations always sounded and looked DELICIOUS on the show, so I was beyond excited to finally get a chance to try it. This was Henry’s way to consoling me after I realized that I was not going to be able to make it back to New York in time for restaurant week this summer. “It’s not even that great of a deal,” he claims–though I beg to differ…just slightly. The greatest part of restaurant week is being able to go to restaurants I normally would not go to, with “It’s restaurant week!” as my sole excuse. It’s like my excuse for going to expensive restaurants.

Anyway, so Morimoto. One word? DISAPPOINTING! Geez. We made reservations for dinner at 5 because all other times were completely booked. When we went there, we drove past the restaurant twice without even seeing it because it was overshadowed by the dreary construction site right next to it. Walking into the restaurant, I immediately noticed the chic and modern vibe that the interior design gave off. There wasn’t really anything inside that made it seem like an Asian restaurant other than the chopsticks on the place settings. Nonetheless, it was a very pretty restaurant.

However, I must talk about the bathroom. It was in the basement, and it was essentially a shared bathroom between the two genders since you could essentially see into the other gender’s bathroom through the mirrors and through the set up. Though very pretty and Asian looking with its choice of materials, it was kinda scary because it was dark and the lights were dim. In addition, the doors on the stalls were SUPER heavy. 😦

I had recently turned 21, so I wanted a chance to finally get carded, thus I ordered an alcoholic beverage–the Lychee Cosmopolitan. It smelled and looked DELICIOUS, it tasted like the nastiest cough syrup that I had ever had to drink, only it was 10x more expensive. I finished it–I wasn’t about to waste $12 on one sip of nastiness, no sir! On top of that, they didn’t even ask me for my ID…i even purposely dressed like a little girl too T_T

The prices on the menu wasn’t as horrible as Bobby Van’s steakhouse (which I WILL be reviewing as well another time), but it was still pretty pricey compared to what I normally go out to.

Appetizers:

Henry ordered the Iron Chef’s Chicken Noodle Soup. I know–wth?! Chicken noodle soup at a Japanese restaurant?! It tasted like a lot of MSG, but at least the chicken was really good–yes, it actually had chicken! The noodles were ramen noodles, which I thought was okay as well. I ordered the Rock Shrimp Tempura because I read online that it was very BIG and delicious, and I really enjoyed the one from Omiya, so I was expecting something great from Morimoto. How very wrong I was. Sure, the plate was ENORMOUS for an appetizer, i couldn’t finish it–Henry couldn’t either. However, it was also very disappointing. The shrimp was fried to a very nice texture–better than Omiya, but the taste was subpar. It was like a sweet and sour but spicy sauce—the kind you have in the Americanized Chinese take out food, only instead of chicken, you have shrimp. It was disappointing for the $18 we spent on it.

Entree:

Originally, I wanted the “Duck Duck Duck” because it sounded delicious, but I remembered hearing about how fresh the fish was, so I ended up ordering one piece of salmon sashimi a la carte, a tuna roll, and a soft shell crab roll (aka, spider roll). The salmon was very fresh–I’ll give Morimoto that. The tuna on the other hand, tasted like Omiya’s–only it was 4x more expensive. The soft shell crab roll had too much stuff in it, so it took away from the crab, not to mention it wasn’t deep fried well, so it made it very hard to eat/chew. In addition, the presentation of the dish was not that impressive either. Henry ordered this seafood entree that came with sticky rice. He said the sticky rice was alright–I was so full, or rather, my stomach hurt so much that I couldn’t even try it. Yes, I got a stomach-ache after eating at Morimoto. It might have been the alcohol, it might have been the food, or it could’ve been a combination of both, but that stomach-ache only added to my horrible experience at Morimoto. Anyway, back to Henry’s dish. It looked and smelled great, it tasted disgusting. There was WAY too much lemon in the soup base, which soaked EVERYTHING, so everything was sour. This didn’t mix well with the taste of scallop and mushroom–heck, it didn’t even taste good with the soup.

So overall, Morimoto was very NOT worth the money we spent there. The bill racked up to about $110 for the two of us, and neither of us left happy.

My stomach-ache didn’t go away until I woke up the next day.