Found out about this restaurant last year through yelp.com. I was intrigued to try but disappointed to know that the restaurant was closed down due to fire. A few months ago, one of my coworkers happened to talk about this restaurant being opened at a different location. Ha..ha..I set a date to give it a try.
Restaurant is located at a strip mall across from Santa Clara Library. Plenty of parking. The restaurant itself isn't that big though so reservation is advised. We reached there around 7 pm. No reservation. Restaurant seemed to be in full swing. I like the dimmed light setting that gave a cozy feeling. We were told that there was a table available only until 8:30. That should be fine, I didn't think we would be eating for like 1.5 hours.
Basically they serve yakitori which is the Japanese style charcoal grill food. They grill anything put on skewer, common ones like chicken breast or beef to the not so common like beef tongue and pork belly. In Japan it is eaten with sake or beer, though like us we enjoyed them as well with hot tea.
I knew what I wanted to order since I've already studied the menu ahead of time. :) Yet once we submitted our order, the guy told us that we probably needed more and we should order now before it got busy and it would take longer. We complied and added a few more items to our order when the soup came.
All in all, grilled food couldn't go wrong. We tried hard not to think that we could do something like this at home. Some of the item that we ordered was really simple - just chicken, green onion and salt. But it tasted very good. I'll try to copy the style next time at home and see what they turn out like. :)
Items that we ordered :
- Tori soup (chicken soup with chicken meatballs - very homely taste)
- Yakitori don (grilled chicken on a bowl of rice with sauce, green onion,seaweed)
- Negima (grilled thigh chicken and green onion with salt)
- Tsukune (grilled chicken meatballs with sauce)
- Sasami (grilled chicken breast with citrus sauce and with wasabi sauce)
- Ika (grilled monterey squid) - tender and juicy
- Enoki bacon - cute idea but a bit too salty for our taste
- Sunagimo (grilled chicken gizzard with garlic) - I love gizzard so it was goood
- Kimo (chicken liver)
- Marinated tuna - a bit over marinated and over cooked for our taste
- Scallop with wasabi - sweet and kick of wasabi
- Crispy chicken skin with octopus salsa. Crispy chicken skin served as chips with raw octopus salsa with hint of wasabi. Extraordinary.
- Butabara (pork belly meat - taste like the Hongkong style sauyuk (BBQ pork). Filled with crispiness and guilt. :)
- Kalbi (kobe style beef) with radish
Sumiya
2634 Homestead Rd Santa Clara, CA 95051 (408) 973-0604
http://www.sumiyakitori.com/index.htm
Restaurant is located at a strip mall across from Santa Clara Library. Plenty of parking. The restaurant itself isn't that big though so reservation is advised. We reached there around 7 pm. No reservation. Restaurant seemed to be in full swing. I like the dimmed light setting that gave a cozy feeling. We were told that there was a table available only until 8:30. That should be fine, I didn't think we would be eating for like 1.5 hours.
Basically they serve yakitori which is the Japanese style charcoal grill food. They grill anything put on skewer, common ones like chicken breast or beef to the not so common like beef tongue and pork belly. In Japan it is eaten with sake or beer, though like us we enjoyed them as well with hot tea.
I knew what I wanted to order since I've already studied the menu ahead of time. :) Yet once we submitted our order, the guy told us that we probably needed more and we should order now before it got busy and it would take longer. We complied and added a few more items to our order when the soup came.
All in all, grilled food couldn't go wrong. We tried hard not to think that we could do something like this at home. Some of the item that we ordered was really simple - just chicken, green onion and salt. But it tasted very good. I'll try to copy the style next time at home and see what they turn out like. :)
Items that we ordered :
- Tori soup (chicken soup with chicken meatballs - very homely taste)
- Yakitori don (grilled chicken on a bowl of rice with sauce, green onion,seaweed)
- Negima (grilled thigh chicken and green onion with salt)
- Tsukune (grilled chicken meatballs with sauce)
- Sasami (grilled chicken breast with citrus sauce and with wasabi sauce)
- Ika (grilled monterey squid) - tender and juicy
- Enoki bacon - cute idea but a bit too salty for our taste
- Sunagimo (grilled chicken gizzard with garlic) - I love gizzard so it was goood
- Kimo (chicken liver)
- Marinated tuna - a bit over marinated and over cooked for our taste
- Scallop with wasabi - sweet and kick of wasabi
- Crispy chicken skin with octopus salsa. Crispy chicken skin served as chips with raw octopus salsa with hint of wasabi. Extraordinary.
- Butabara (pork belly meat - taste like the Hongkong style sauyuk (BBQ pork). Filled with crispiness and guilt. :)
- Kalbi (kobe style beef) with radish
Sumiya
2634 Homestead Rd Santa Clara, CA 95051 (408) 973-0604
http://www.sumiyakitori.com/index.htm
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