For everyone that loves to eat, now is the chance to explore some fine cuisine in Los Angeles as their is a special promotion where restaurants participate in an event known as Dine LA Week. For two weeks, a host of restaurants in the Los Angeles area offer a fixed menu to choose from to show case each restaurants food. Each meal ranges from $16 to $34 for dinner and a bit less for lunch, depending on the restaurant. Each meal will include the restaurants signature choices of appetizers, entree and dessert. You can find the list of participating restaurants here.
The wife and I decided to check out Roy’s Hawaiiwan Fusion restaurant in Pasadena since we have heard great things about it. Here is a quick breakdown of our experience.
We made reservations for 8:00 PM, Friday night and it was so busy that we did not get seated until 8:30 PM. This is good and bad.. obvious because the restaurant is so busy must mean the food is great but at the same time, when you make a reservation, you do not expect to wait another 30 minutes to be seated.
Once seated, our server came around immediately, and promptly supplied us with their house edamame peas which were very delicious. It took us quite some time to decide whether on going with the Dine LA week menu or just ordering off the menu. We were almost settled on having a Dine LA menu with an order of Surf and Turf. After conversating with our waiter, we felt having the Surf and Turf may have been too much and thought we’d just take advantage of the Dine LA menu promotion. In the end, we ordered a Risotto appetizer which was a combination of a seared scallop topped with uni sauce which tasted awesome combined with the recommended grape fruit yellowtail sashimi. We also ordered the chicken katsu salad which was very delicious. The chicken katsu had the right amount of crust and it is flavored just right without an overkill on the fried breading. For the entree, it was recommended to us to have the short rib, a rather generous piece of meat along with gratin potatoes. Finally, we finished our meal with their signature chocolate soufle and vanilla bean ice cream.
The portions were a bit small, but it felt like an expensive five course meal without the heavy price tag usually comes along with it. I would definitely recommend taking advantage of the current Dine LA week promotion as it definitely will lead you to come back for more. I look to return to Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion in the near future to order the Surf and Turf as well as taking on their newly added Rack of Lamb on the menu.
Overall experience, besides the awful wait, most likely due to the Dine LA week promotion, the food was great, service was great, and so I look forward to returning to Roy’s Hawaiian for some more dining experience.