Restaurant Review: Minado

I would just like to say that I absolutely love Japanese sushi buffets.
All you can eat sushi!
Ahh!  It sounds so delicious, and so long as the fish if fresh and high quality sushi buffets are an amazing idea! Unfortunately, it can be hard to find a high quality, decently priced place, but no worries, my friends and I have searched and searched and we've found some great options.
Tonight, we went to Minado in Little Ferry. It is my second favorite all you can eat sushi buffet (at some point I'm going to write a review for my absolute favorite some point soon... I meant to do it before but I suck at blogging in a timely fashion).
The fish is very fresh and there are so many different options of rolls, sashimi, vegetables, hot food and dessert.  I probably should have taken a picture of the general setup, but I was more concerned with filling my plate(s).
I had 3 full plates of food, a bowl of udon, plus a small dessert plate and my friends basically all did the same. It was kind of amazing. And honestly, I'm still in a semi food coma.


My first plate was filled with a lot of tuna sashimi, shrimp, lots of rolls (especially rolls with tuna) and a kind of Japanese beef tartar (it has a specific name but I can't remember what).  The beef was utterly delicious that melted in my mouth. The tuna was fantastic. It is my absolute favorite fish, especially when raw. It is one of the least fishy fish that I can think of and I absolutely adored the ode to tuna on my first dish of yumminess.

My second plate was equally
amazing. It was also quite possibly another ode to tuna.  I got more rolls.  They had a lot of traditional rolls like Philadelphia rolls, California rolls, spicy tuna rolls, so forth and so on. But there were some really delicious and unique options.  I'd never seen a roll utilizing tuna and sweet potato before but it was quite good. There was another roll that had bbq sauce on top. It was surprisingly good considering the unique combination of western ingredients. I also found the roe utterly delicious. There were 4 kinds there, the large orange roe, small orange roe, red roe and black roe.  I didn't try the large roe, honestly I'm always a little frightened of it, but I did try the other 3.  I had never tried the black or red, but they were quite delectable. I think the red was my favorite because it had a little tang to it.  There were rolls that used real crabmeat, and those that used the imitation, both were equally good.  I think my favorite roll overall was the spicy lovers roll. It had a combination of different fish with some crunch and lots of spice.  I was very pleased with everything I tried.

My last full plate was one filled with green.  By this point, I was starting to get full so I decided to lighten things up with lots and lots of green.  I got chinese broccoli, edamame and bakchoy. So amazing.  The edamame was not oversalted and perfectly cooked. The broccoli was quite delicious as well and very light.  I didn't love the bakchoy as much. It was well cooked, but seasoned lightly with sesame and slightly bitter (as often happens with bakchoy).  I also tried a pork shumai and a shrimp shumai. Both were delicious and not at all heavy.  I even tried some of the tempura. Mmmm. The shrimp was perfectly cooked as was the butternut squash (deliciously smooth) and renkon (lotus root).  This was a happy plate for me.  However, I did not try the last thing on my plate. It was a deep fried roll which looked quite good, but I couldn't make myself eat it for some reason. Another friend assured me it was quite delicious.
Then I got to try some Udon which was made right in front of me at my request. It had a tempura
shrimp and lots of fresh vegetables in the broth. It was full of flavor but a bit salty for me. However, the noodles were perfectly cooked and so were the other ingredients. At the same station you could also get buckwheat noodles or fresh ramen. I'm always so excited for the hot soup stations at Sushi Buffets.

I'm sad to say that I didn't have room for any other savory treats. I would have loved some king crab legs, maybe some of the fresh oysters that my friends were raving about, or even the hot teriyakis. Everything looked delicious but I simply ran out of room. I was trying to avoid food coma but simply failed.  In any case, I chose not to skip dessert.   I mean, full or not, who skips dessert?

I chose to get a small serving of swirled vanilla and green tea soft serve ice cream with chocolate sauce on top, a piece of red velvet cake, a piece of strawberry cake and a piece of cookies and cream cake. So many levels of happy. Each cake was tiny, so I didn't even have to feel guilty about it.  The red velvet was surprisingly good but the cookies was my favorite cake. The ice cream was my favorite and it was very refreshing paired after everything else.  I was realy tempted to get a crepe like my cousin. She loved hers and picked her own ingredients which a chef put together right in front of her. I wasn't in the mood for anything warm so I just looked on happily.

So that was my dinner. It will be my last sushi for a while so I was very pleased. Minado was a great choice and I highly recommend it for anyone in the North Jersey area.

P.S. For anyone who doesn't know yet, I'm moving back to Italy in 1 week!!
I'm very excited and can't wait to be in Rome. It will be a new city for me with many adventures to be had. However, I won't be having sushi or Asian food for a little bit (until I find the best places in the city) so I'm getting my fix this week.

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