Ebisu Restaurant Review Part I

[Jennifer Luxmoore]

Ebisu Japanese Restaurant (Part I)
38 Pontiac Avenue, Providence
Date of Visit: Saturday January 17,2009
Website: www.ebisuri.com
Price: $$

(This post is very biased. My husband and I went to Japan a few months ago and ate the most incredible meals! The food there was fantastic! So, it will be very hard for any local Japanese/Sushi type restaurants to live up to that experience. )

Ebisu is a Japanese restaurant, but not a sushi restaurant; they serve Yakitori (meat on a stick!), noodles and Shabu Shabu, which is “a Japanese variety of hot pot. The dish is prepared by submerging a very thin slice of meat or vegetable in a pot of boiling dashi (broth) and swishing it back and forth several times.” Since it was just the 2 of us, we decided to wait on the Shabu Shabu until we had friends join us.

Food first…. I ordered a Japanese mixed drink and he had a beer. For appetizers I had the Tsukune Yakitori (chicken meatballs) and my husband had the Gyoza (Pan Seared Pork Dumplings). I loved the yakitori in Japan, moist, a huge variety of flavors, grilled and had great sauces. These were just ok; the meatballs were a bit dry, and the sauce, boring. I’d probably try a different Yakitori next time. The Gyoza again, was just ok, not seared enough for my liking and a bit chewy.

For dinner I had Katsu Curry… fried breaded Pork with Japanese Curry, and he had the Ebisu Raman… thin egg noodles in pork broth with bbq pork. I loved Katsu in Japan, it was moist, fatty, lightly breaded and fried beautifully. At Ebisu the katsu was presented on a split plate with a mound of rice on one side and a bowl of the food on the other. The katsu was buried under the carrots and potato curry instead of being presented on top. The breading was good and it wasn’t too heavy, though the pork was dry, which was disappointing. The curry sauce was very good, flavorful and well spiced. The potato surprised me, but it was good. The Ebisu Raman was bland; he had to add a lot of pepper, salt and paprika to it.

Service: Service was slow. We were there for an hour before our meal was served. Appetizers came out separately at about 25 and 40 minutes in. There was only 1 waitress and she was handling 7 tables, our guess was that there was probably only 1 cook in the back as well. It was a Saturday night, there’s no reason why there should only be one waitress.

All and All… We’ll go back to try the Shabu Shabu, for part II of the review, but I don’t know if we’d go to Ebisu again, based on this visit.

Price: The entire meal, for 2, was $41 (alcohol included) plus tip

[Malyna]

Mmm, i do love the gyoza at Ebisu.

[Mr. Ritz]

Matthew, I think the gyoza at Ebisu is excellent. And from what I've heard, I'm definitely not alone in thinking so.

[Matthew Zuchowski]

Have you found a decent gyoza place since this post? I'll be looking out myself and will let you know if I find some. I used to live in Utsunomiya which is Japan's gyoza capital. Now that the cold weather is arriving here in Providence, I'm having a hankering for some good dumplings.

[Mr. Ritz]

Jennifer, I can't claim knowledge of Japanese food from within the country as I've never visited Japan...yet. However, I've been to Ebisu a few times now and love the food. I was especially impressed by the grilled squid, hamachi cheeks, and the great variety of sake.

Maybe the slow service was the result of them being new because I didn't notice. Although...sake has a way of changing time.