Food on sticks at Yakiniku, HRC

Food on sticks! Yakiniku at the Hyatt Regency  Chennai has a yakitori festival happening till the end of November. While yakitori is mainly made with chicken, it could also be made with vegetables and other kinds of meats. Yakitori is usually had as an appetiser course and is great with drinks.

Skewers on the grill

Astuage; piman; yadai yaki

Chef Amlendu's grill plate was all fired up and our platter of vegetarian skewers were getting a grilling on it. Piman - green molagu chillies stuffed with smooth mashed potatoes, chopped jalapeño peppers and cheese was quite delish and a lovely combination of ingredients. Astuage is a marinated tofu skewer while yasai yaki is a skewer with cherry tomato, zucchini, mushroom and okra. The lightly grilled veggies still had a bit of crunch and they paired well with shio, miso and tonkatsu sauces. Shio is a dipping salt, this one had sesame seeds in it. The plum sauce was too salty to be appreciated.

Shio; plum sauce; miso ; tonkatsu sauce

Ebi; tsukune; buta; gyuu

Light and refreshing Asahi beer 

The non vegetarian platter had ebi - prawn, tsukune - minced chicken, buta - pork and gyuu - beef. The prawns were large but overcooked. Its sake-based marinade had a nice flavour; tsukune was a mix of minced chicken, spring onion and carrot shaped and cooked into juicy little sausages. The pork and beef were thinly sliced and very tender, the beef especially had a nice gingery warmth. More sauce could have been brushed over the meats which would have amped up the flavours. Both platters came with a side of salad veggies topped with sauce. The food is light and you could actually make a meal of just these sticks.

Nigiri sushi - ebi; tuna and salmon

Miso soup with tofu

Yakiniku has a good Japanese menu so we decided to order nigiri sushi for mains. Our platter was made with prawn, tuna and salmon sushi. Even better was the umami flavour-rich and comforting miso soup that followed, with seaweed and tofu.

Financier 

Strawberry cheesecake

Yakiniku has just 2 items on its dessert menu and I've tried both on earlier visits so we decided to have our desserts from the neighbouring Spice Haat. Of the two, we preferred the strawberry cheesecake. Yakiniku's dessert menu does need an overhaul.