Kintaro @ Neutral Bay

It was a casual board game night (sounds nerdy but so much fun!) with my friends and this time, it was at Neutral Bay at I's house. First thing I thought was FOOD!!! Neutral Bay has so many unexplored eateries and Kintaro was one of them. 

Located just around the corner from Pony, Kintaro is a homey Japanese restaurant with big and small decorations cluttered on the walls like you would see in a lot of restaurants in Japan. We went around 7:30 but the place was busier after that. I took the Man to one of my gym classes so we were both dead tired and famished beyond reason. I could feel my stomach eating itself and even chatting used up too much energy. The wait was painstakingly long - almost 20+ minutes and by the time the food came out, all conversation had ceased and we had given up waiting for our meals. 

 The cups. My friends thought I was really strange for taking photos of these.

The menu.

The spider roll. I didn't get to taste this one but my friend asked for chili mayonnaise on the side. The roll seems rather empty but it's the taste that matters.

Karaage chicken. Quite a different presentation to what we're normally used to. It's easy to hold and eat bite by bite, which is better than digging straight in then burning your roof (which I've done countless times!).

Crunchy and well coated.

Katsu don.

Eel yamagawa. I had no idea what yamagawa was and even looked it up on Google to see what it was. Basically it was eel, tofu and spinach grilled in a soy based sauce. The flavour wasn't too strong but towards the end of the meal, I found myself drinking lots of water from all the saltiness. I loved the silkiness of the tofu and found it better than the eel itself. As for the eel, it wasn't that special but it was soft and soaked well in the sauce.

Overall the experience was ... hungry. The staff were nice but got distracted while taking our order so for a while, I was talking to myself. The order took very long, despite the restaurant being fairly empty when we walked in. The food was nice but I've had better Japanese food at better prices.