Dinner @ Otaru

Otaru
5100 Beltline Road Ste 796
Dallas, TX 75254
(972) 866-8278
www.otaruaddison.com
Price: $-$$

I recently found out about another sushi place in Addison that supposedly has really good happy hour specials. Otaru Japanese Restaurant and Lounge. According to their website they had drink specials all day every day, as well as Buy 1 Get 1 on certain sushi orders. Since Firefly was a dud...(a friend of mine went for lunch and said their sushi was warm...ew...) I hoped Otaru would be much better.

It is located behind TGI Fridays on Beltline and Tollway area. It's a little hidden so look for TGIF and you should be fine. Upon walking in, it's very dark, kind of bluish/lounge-y lighting. The place was empty except for a small group at the sushi bar. Yikes...I was a little worried. I basically chose to be seated at their large table in the back, where it had more lights and felt less dreary.

After some people started arriving, the waitress came around to get our drink orders. They were very nice, but one of them did not speak English well. The menu has a lot of selection and the prices are pretty decent for a sushi place. Since I saw on the website that they had sushi specials, I asked the waitress just to make sure. The first waitress told me they do not have food specials, only drinks. She seemed confused as I was asking her... I was like...what??? So then I asked the other waitress, and she said the same thing, but then went to go check with the sushi chef. She informed us that the sushi chef is going to let us do the Buy 1 sushi get 1 free deal. I was a little annoyed... It was good that they let us do the promotion, even though they are no longer doing it, but please Please PLEASE update your websites people!!! I hate it when places don't update their websites and gives people false hope when they go in. They also told my friends less drink specials than they have posted on their website. Sigh~

Off to a not so great start... So we all ordered our own thing. But I was able to sample quite a few.

I got the Otaru Salad (house salad with ginger dressing) $2.25~ I liked the salad a lot. The greens were crisp and fresh. The dressing was tasty and not over powering. And the bowl it came in was pretty cute.




I ordered the Salmon Sushi $3.95~ and Squid Sushi $3.75~(which were buy 1 get 1 free). Both were pretty good. Good texture and quite fresh. I liked how the salmon was a nice thick strip unlike some places that give you a tiny thin piece.

I also got 2 different rolls: Futo Maki Roll $4.50~ and Spicy California Roll (topped with Sriracha) $4.50~ The Futo Maki turned out to be Korean style rolls...which I am not a fan of. The ingredients inside the rolls were fake crab, egg, carrot, cucumber and avocado. The flavors were bland and just not very appetizing... But I really enjoyed the spicy California Roll. It was basically regular California Rolls with drops of Sriracha on it. The rolls themselves were great, but the sriracha added so much more flavor and that spicy kick. It was yummy! I think I'll ask for sriracha next time I order regular california rolls! hehe.

My sister got the Otaru Ramen (ramen noodle with green onion, nori, pepper, slices of Korean pepper and assortment of seafood) $7.95~ It was a pretty large bowl and smelled awesome. The noodles turned out to be the korean instant noodles that you can buy at the supermarket. If you've had Shin spicy noodles, you know what I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong tho, those noodles are awesome. I love the texture. The ramen was good! Spicy broth with lots of different seafood in it. We laughed about paying $8 for instant noodles but all agreed that they backed up the price with the additional ingredients.

Other people ordered an assortment of rolls:

Kamikaze Roll (spicy tuna roll topped with spicy tuna, avocado and spicy mayo) $10+~ This was really tasty! I love avocado and I love spicy. It was creamy and spicy and full of flavor. i would recommend this to avocado lovers.

White Dragon Roll (spicy tuna and shrimp tempura roll topped with rice noodle? and jalapeno) $10+~ This was also pretty good. We couldn't really figure out what the white layer on top is...texturally it felt like rice noodle. I liked Kamikaze better but this was good too!

Pink Lady Roll (crab and SMT wrapped with salmon topped with blueberry mayo) $9.50~ It was disappointing.. when they brought it we were like...That's it?!?!? There needs to be more food when it's almost $10. haha. My friend said it was good but definitely not worth the money.



King Kong Roll (seared beef, pineapple, and some kind of sauce) $10+~ I didn't get to try this but it looked really tasty, and my friend cleaned his plate!

We got a nice surprise at the end of dinner. They brought out 2 sizzling plates of Korean Cheese Corn on the house. I love corn! And sizzling cheese?!? YUM! I wish we had some rice or something to go with it but it was really good. A pleasant surprise. :)


All in all, it was a good dinner. Started out kinda rough, but the food was pretty good. The waitresses were nice but service was kind of lacking. Eh...I wasn't expecting much more to tell you the truth...haha... I guess the food and decent prices made up for the outdated website information and lack of service. I would probably go again to try more of their specialty rolls...and maybe a bento box.

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~~ CHOMP CHOMP ~~