Iketeru is a favourite destination of ours. We like the modern lighting and decor, and its lots of little alcoves for private dining and a usually excellent quality of menu. Steak on previous occasions had been wonderful. Usually.
We like to sit at the teppankayi counter and watch the chefs work their magic. They were a bit quiet today - in retrospect, should maybe have taken this as an ominous portent. Not busy can often mean the place is out of favour. And so it proved, with the lunch being a bit short on standard on this occasion. We ordered the set Sashimi plus Teppanyaki Beef and Special Tempura Prawn lunches.
My salad came out dripping with cloyingly sweet thousand island or something, though the miso was hot and saltily invigorating. Maybe that was the plan - give sweet followed by salty. Sashimi was three chunks of salmon, and two of the whitefish and octopus leg respectively. No tuna. Hmmmm… We tend to expect some tuna in sashimi servings. First time we'd ever had sashimi sans tuna. Hmmm....
The tempura prawn in special soy sauce - whilst the texture of the prawn was terrific, the batter was squishy and… just bleughh. There was little crunch, and mostly egg and flour on the tongue. It was like sucking on KFC batter that had been dipped in hot water - all limp and squidgy. Tastewise was interesting enough, with egg and salt on the tongue, but the texture was hardly tempura. The egg custard was light and clean.
I tried the beef. It was okay, but seemed to miss the standard of previous visits. It was cold when it came out and colder when I tried it. Meat quality was fine enough, maybe that little bit of care and love in the preparation seemed to be missing.
Bit of a shock when the Green Tea came out at RM9 per person - I seem to recall it used to be gratis.
Service was sufficiently friendly and unobtrusive, though on this showing there's way better Japanese to be had elsewhere n the city, most notably at Kame Sushi in Sri Hartamas. If we are paying Hilton prices, we can surely expect Hilton standard. Didn't seem to hit it on this occasion.
Yet again the Hilton/Meridien car park failed, with the machine eating my ticket and failing to let us out at the barrier. We picked a time when our car parking attendants went off for a pee break. This is about the fourth time in a row that this car park has given me a problem. Probably the central reason I will not return to Iketeru for a while. Maybe the hotel renovation currently underway will do something about what is possibly some of the worst hotel parking experience in the city.
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