Pre-Movie Eats Review: Saku Japan Grill

As I discussed in a previous post last weekend The Girlfriend and I decided to go see the superhero blockbuster, Thor.  I was pondering what exactly our pre-movie eats would be.  I thought now would be a good time to do a little update post/review.

I know this is a food blog, but I wanted to at least mention that I thought Thor was awesome!  It had an interesting story, good characters, humor, good writing and good action.  Go see it!  Anyway, what was really important is what and where we decided to do dinner.  Since we were going to a 7 pm show I thought it would be a good idea to grab something before the movie seeing both of us were really to hungry to eat at 9 pm.  We also decided that we weren't really feeling a sit down meal due to timing issues, but we also did not want to just grab fast food.  We decided to find a place to grab some good eats near the theater so we decided on Saku Japan Grill located in the Hamilton Town Center shopping mall.

Going in, I wasn't really sure what to expect.  I was somewhat in the mood for sushi which was indeed on the menu at Saku, but when I arrived I didn't see anyone making or eating it so I rightly or wrongly questioned its quality.  The Girlfriend and I decided to go with the special instead which consisted of a combo of orange chicken and chicken teriyaki, steamed veggies and white rice.  I readily admit that this was not the most exciting or adventurous meal, but I will say this wasn't really your typical mall food court Asian food.  The veggies had wonderful crunch and flavor that I definitely wasn't expecting.  The orange chicken was pretty much every orange chicken you've ever had.  It was sweet and slightly tangy, but I thought it had much better flavor and a fresher taste than say a place like Panda Express.  The chicken teriyaki was surprisingly grilled to order instead of just dished out from a pre-prepared batch.  My advice would be to skip the combo special and just get the teryaki by itself if you're into those sort of flavors.  The portions were also quite large.  Each of us had enough left over for lunch the next day.  One criticism is that having part of the name be "Japan Grill" is a little misleading.  Yes they are doing sushi (maybe?), but most of the dishes seem like standard Americanized Chinese.  Then again expecting authenticity at mall food court is like expecting Kirstie Alley to let you have the last slice of pizza.

Taste 7/10  Not really very sophisticated, but pretty enjoyable for mall food.  It was way better than grabbing burgers before going to see the god of thunder.
Value 4/10  I had a bit of sticker shock when our bill for our 2 "specials" and 2 drinks came to 22 dollars.  The food was good, but not better than I've had a my favorite Chinese takeout.  Also, when we get takeout we get egg rolls and a separate order of crab Rangoon and I still don't need a whole Jackson to pay the bill.  We did get 2 meals out of it, but pre-diet me would have easily ate it in one sitting.