Douzo Japanese Steakhouse Review

      After our first choice fell through, (who knew Bobcat Cafe was so popular), we decided to have a meal at this new Japanese/Thai/Steakhouse restaurant. Located near Tafts corner, where the old Orchid restaurant used to be. The first thing you notice when walking in is how big the place is. Then you notice there is nobody around, that's because instead of stopping at the bar or what should be the hostess station, you need to walk all the way into the first dining room. Cavernous doesn't even begin to describe the place and this is a problem as I will point out later.

      Once you walk in, someone will guide you to a table. We were taken into yet another room, and this one was very nice, great decor, sushi bar, giant live tree, bubbling fountains and deep purple walls, This is a really nice spot and feels good too, as there are more people in here, so it feels like the restaurant isn't empty. We were handed two menus, one for drinks and one for supper. Beer and wine choices are limited, as is normal for most Asian restaurants, though I did see some unusual wine choices, must be for the steakhouse offerings. One of the specialties here is martinis, lots and lots of martinis. We ordered drinks, beers for the guys, one Thai and one Chinese and martinis for the ladies, (HA, if you read this blog you saw that one coming). Monkey Business for the wife and Lemon Drop for Chris, and hence the funniest line of the evening from the dear wife, "Do you want a picture of my monkey business before I drink" HAHAHA!!!

      The drinks were quite good, though the Lemon drop was very strong, and at $9.00 each, they should be. The beers OK, the Thai beer, Singhai, better than my Chinese beer which was merely cold, but then again you really don't want a beer too flavorful as this will fight with the flavors of the food.  We started our meal with two sushi rolls, the shrimp tempura and the spicy tuna;

      Both were good, though I thought the tuna was the better of the two, not too spicy but very fresh with a great flavored sauce. The shrimp was OK but I found it to be a bit tough and lacking in shrimp, (plus I am not crazy about asparagus in my rolls). A quick word about the menus, first they are huge, with MANY options, ranging from exotic to steak and chicken (cooked on a hibachi at your table, though I didn't see one in use). But the menus are the plastic laminated style with pictures of the food that you usually see in really inexpensive Chinese joints, NOT what you'd expect from such a high end place (and it IS high end, as we will soon see). Plus my plastic laminated menu was really sticky.

      For our entrees we went all over the place. Mike went with spicy salmon, Chris with sweet and sour shrimp and scallop, wife with sea bass and tamarind sauce and I went with spicy duck and scallop. Mike had the only two chili pepper dish of the bunch. Everything was quite good, though the sauce on wife's bass was WAY too sweet, (my sauce, while a bit spicy, was quite sweet also). So unfortunately for her, she didn't touch her rice, and as we all know white Thai rice has to be dunked in a sauce to be good. That said it wasn't that the fish wasn't cooked properly, just the sauce didn't agree with her. And that can be a problem when faced with so many choices, it's very difficult to pick the winners and the losers on a menu this size. My food was good, though I thought the duck was rather skimpy for the pricing, more bones than duck. The scallops were good though.

      Douzo seems to be a tale of two restaurants. On the one hand it wants to be a high end Asian restaurant ,ala San Sai. and it does do several things correct. The martini menu is large and fun, sushi is fresh and well prepared, and the menu is large and diverse. On the other hand, the space is overwhelmingly large and can feel empty, service can be cloying, too many people constantly asking if everything is alright and finally some of the items (menus, chopsticks, glassware) make it feel like your in a fast food Chinese spot. I guess for me what it always comes down to, is it better than Tiny Thai. I would say yes, by a tiny margin (HA), the variety is much better, the food about the same or maybe just a bit less and you can order alcohol, though at a price. BUT and this is a HUGE BUT, is it worth more than two times the cost and this is a BIG NO.

      If I am going to pay twice as much for something, then it needs to be twice as good. And while Douzo was quite good, it certainly wasn't twice as good as Tiny Thai. Plus the ambiance is more warehouse than homey.

On a scale of 1 to 5;
Food,                Quality means much more to us than quantity.
Beer and Wine,  Based on selection and pricing

Service,             Speaks for itself
Ambiance,          Does the look fit the food and pricing

 Price,                And finally does the pricing equal the results we had.

Food,                     3.5   For the most part the food was excellent, sushi was fresh. Alot of the sauces are very sweet.
Beer and Wine,    3.   Limited beer and wine selections,lots of martinis. Some unusual wine selections (for the steakhouse side I guess).
Service,                 3    Can service be too good? We seemed to have someone at the table all the time.

Ambiance,             3    This is a tough one,where we sat was nice but the other room not so much.
Price,                     3    Very pricey, is it too pricey? That is up to you but I felt it was.

Overall                  3.1  I like that you can get Sushi, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and steak selections all in one place. Also that you can get a drink, without having to remember to bring your own. But the problem here is maybe the menu is too ambitious, the space is way too large and the pricing much too high. If we have a crowd where everyone wants something different, maybe we will be back. Otherwise, I'll stick to Tiny Thai. Still my champion for Thai food.  

Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin

      I am a huge history buff. Where ever and when ever we travel, we love to visit at least one historical site or go on a tour of a famous place. Our spring trip to California afforded us a chance to visit the Hearst castle and on this trip I jumped at the chance to visit, arguably, America's most famous architects studio, Franklin Lloyd Wright's Taliesin. I won't go into alot of detail, but what a life this man led. Three wives, one mistress, the murder of said mistress and her children by a deranged employee, feast or famine in his business which saw him go from nothing to world famous and back several times and finally settling down with a woman 30 years his junior. This is a man, who never got an engineering degree by the way, who truly was larger than life. Oh and less we forget, Taliesin burned down twice, (once by said deranged employee), and then some nasty business with Frank's body being dug up, as he was buried next to the mistress and not the final wife, and his remains disappearing forever. Read the book, it's fascinating.

      Taliesin started as a home for Frank and his mistress, after he left his wife in the Chicago area with their six kids, (OK, he was a visionary but really, not a very nice guy). but eventually turned into an architect school where students had the privilege of paying to become indentured servants and learning architecture from the master (while working on his farm and building his houses for him). Enough talk, more pics.

                                          Eyebrow not top of head.

      You start your tour across the road at the visitors center. This is an original Frank Lloyd Wright building also. Originally a high end restaurant and bar, it has been transformed into a visitor's center,  gigantic gift shop (just like Disney except you walk through before you start instead of after you finish), and a restaurant/coffee shop serving expensive lunch food in a really cool setting. Dean was wise to call for tickets before we left the house, as tours on summer weekends sell out fast (just a word to the wise). Here are a few pictures showing the visitors center;
                                                    The Visitor's center

Stacked stone a Wright trademark

This beautiful set can be yours for $12,000

 

      Once your tour is called you are loaded onto a small bus for the long trip across the road . Some more interesting (or boring, depends on your point of view) facts about Frank and Taliesin. First, one reason Frank embraced the Arts and Crafts movement is long straight lines. Frank was only 5 ft 4 after all, (also the reason he insisted on wearing capes). Over the years Taliesin has been expanded to over 37,000 square feet and some students and board members live there today. They do not live in the main house, as this is a museum but in separate apartments off the main house,(must be fun, as Frank thought bedrooms and bathrooms were wasted space). Back to the tour, as you turn into the driveway, you notice a beautiful little pond and waterfall. Seems Frank damned up the local creek and built himself a little hydro electric plant, thus becoming the first house in Spring Green with electricity.

      Once you reach the top of the driveway you notice the house is not sitting on the top of the hill. That's because Frank believed houses should blend with the landscape, not overwhelm it. So his house is at "eyebrow" level not "top of head level". Of course, being he was not an engineer, the house is now sliding down the hill and costing millions of dollars to anchor properly, oh well can't win them all. Some pics of the house;

      By now I am sure you are all bored to death. So I will leave you with a few more pictures of the view, (Frank was a visionary, buying up all the land around the house so the view would never be interrupted) and a bit of the incredible Asian art collection Frank bought with his commission of the Royal Tokyo hotel (two full railcars sent back home). Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take photos in the house itself, that you have to be here to experience. If you are ever in the area, I highly recommend this tour, enjoy;

Frank was ahead of his time, these are parts of an old barn he reused as a decorative element for the house.

San Sai Japanese Restaurant

      On Friday night Karen and I visited the newest restaurant to open in Burlington, San Sai.. Promising big city dining (The chef owned a successful Japanese restaurant in NYC), we were very excited to try something brand new to us, Omakase, or chefs choice. This is a brand new concept here in Burlington. You, the diner, sets the price, ($30.00 each in our case) and the chef provides the courses (6 in total for us).

     The building is a beautiful brick warehouse down on the waterfront. Old brick walls, warm wood beams and floors, contrast nicely with the stainless steel table tops and flowing Japanese banners.

     

       We were seated promptly (we did have very early reservations of 6;15) and quickly decided on a Sauvignon Blanc from France. This was a BARGAIN at $18.00 and went very well with almost all the courses, (OK nothing goes well with Miso Soup, please correct me if I am wrong). After a short wait our first course came out, WOW crispy salmon skin salad and was it GOOD. We were amazed at the flavors , textures, taste , it was perfect. Was this a glimpse of what was to come, would every course be better and better,  would we eventually fall in a comatose food coma..........Umm no, but things certainly didn't fall downhill, just that this first course was the best of the night.

                                        

        The first course was followed QUICKLY  (this would be a theme for the night, course spacing was a major problem), by our 2nd course. This was the most unique offering of the evening, thinly slices soba noodles wrapped in nori and served as a sushi roll, each section topped with a tempura vegetable (2nd theme of the evening , our server not knowing what exactly was on the plate), and all this topped by another mass of tempura noodles? leeks? onions?. So as you can see we were not entirely sure what we were eating, even as we spent minutes contemplating the dish as our server had forgotten share plates and then disappeared (theme three for the night, for those of you counting). Eventually the smells got to us and we said heck with share plates and just dug in, Delicious, this is what Japanese food should be all about, multiple textures, multiple flavors, in every bite. so two course in we were smiling  very huge smiles, (The bottle of wine didn't hurt either).

                          

      Our server finally showed up with our share plates, we were done by this time, and proceeded to ask if we wanted soup or salad. UMM we already had a salad so soup please. Our 3rd course was a cup of Miso Soup. It was OK Miso not great , not bad , just normal. Not enough tofu for my taste and too salty for Karen's but all in all not bad, (no picture c'mon its soup).
        After quite a long wait, our 4th course came out and this was the low point of the evening for both of us.  A large round of daikon was topped with a thick layer of sesame paste.For me the problem was the texture. the daikon was baby food soft and the sesame paste only served to emphasize the texture. Karen's problem with this dish was the taste, she said the daikon reminded her of turnip (which she hates, but as I have never eaten a turnip I can't comment on that). Later, I saw other tables were being served the daikon along with a skewer of grilled, marinated, chicken, (Yakitori), that is exactly what this course needed. A different texture, and flavor to offset the bland daikon. Not sure where ours went but we never got it.
             
       

         Now the waiting really began, (OK at this point I need to say our server was the sweetest, friendliest server but had obviously been thrown into the pressure cooker of a holiday weekend, July 4th, unprepared.) We found out on our way out that a server had decided at the last minute to head to Vegas (hope he gets canned) and left the restaurant short staffed, on a holiday Friday night at that. BUT that is no excuse, a high end place like this needs to have reserves in the wings who can come in a rescue them , we saw a table sit for over 30 minutes before being ACKNOWLEDGED, that is unacceptable at this price point (or any price point really). OK back to supper, the 5th course arrived and was a serving of picked squid, this was new to both of us and REALLY yummy.

            Again a HUGE wait for our last course, which was a beautifully composed platter of 6 sushi offerings. Not really sure what they all were as our server couldn't tell us all of them, but we had yellowtail, o-toro, salmon, snapper, maybe white tuna and no idea on the last one eel maybe?? All really good but not great sushi. I've had better and I've had worse. Finally since we had never had it before we asked for an order of sea urchin, again we waited (but we were not charged so its OK). After waiting, neither of us are sure if we like sea urchin or not. maybe it wasn't totally fresh, maybe there was too much of it, or maybe we just aren't used to such a strong flavor. No pictures of the last two courses (OK it was a WHOLE bottle of wine), but here is a great shot of Karen with the sunset spilling through the windows.
             



        To conclude and rate San Sai, I am going to totally rip-off one of my favorite food blogs, What Mickey eats, ratings will be based on four factors, all rated from 1 EWWWWW to 5 YUMMY.

 Food,       Quality means much more to us than quantity.

Wine,        Since we are such wine geeks I have to have a rating based on value and selection

Service,     Speaks for itself
Ambiance  Does the look fit the food and pricing 

Price,        And finally does the pricing equal the results we had.

       So after spending a bit more than $100 (with tax and tip) what did we think;

Food        4  Some was incredible , some ordinary, (no points off for the daikon it just wasn't our thing)

Wine        3  Great bargains, very limited choices

Service    3 This was tough, should of been 2 but she really was trying hard and it wasn't totally her fault

Ambiance 5 Beautiful building in a beautiful location

Price         4 A bit expensive overall, small portions but well prepared

Overall  3.8, We will be back big Yes. I can't wait to see how the chef keeps us from getting bored with his chefs choice meals, I would hope our next time brings 6 new courses, I will keep you all informed.

       And finally, we visited Breakwaters after supper and were treated to a gorgeous sunset