Restaurant Review: Kyoto Asian Cuisine Bar and Grill

A few months ago a new Japanese restaurant opened up in Morehead City, NC. In MHC we have a few Asian buffets that are alright, a couple restaurants like Kabutos and a local (I believe) chain called Musashi which is the most popular around here, which is what I am comparing Kyoto to. I wasn't expecting much from Kyoto, the outside of the building isn't much to look at, just a small building, not very pretty. But the inside was set up very nice, for the small space they had, they managed to set up a bar and a few very nice seating areas. There weren't too many decorations like some places have, very sleek and simple.

Bryan and I were the only customers, so we got our orders taken very quickly. The salad was alright, Musashi's has a few more carrots and other veggies in it, which I like, but salad is salad. I loved their broth (I think it's called Dashi?) soup much more than Musashi's though, much less salt in the broth and way more veggies in the soup. Instead of the half slice of onion and one mushroom and a few chives that I usually see when I get my soup at Musashi's, I got several onions, fried and non, a ton of mushrooms and chives. It was great.



Next we got our sushi course. Now, I'm a new sushi eater. I wasn't all that fond of it until recently, and now I'm all about some sushi. We were going to order an appetizer sushi, but that was ridiculously priced at only five pieces for $7.95 when a whole roll is usually six pieces. So we looked at the sushi menu and they had three rolls for $11.95. I would much rather pay about .70 for each piece than $1.60. But let me tell you, the sushi was AMAZING! We got an Eel roll, a California roll, and a Salmon roll. It tasted like they had just gotten the fish off the boat. It was so good, I will definitely be getting sushi from there, exclusively. Since I said I was a new sushi eater, I don't know if dipping sushi in the white sauce is weird at all, but I've never been a fan of soy sauce.

We got our meals after the sushi. Bryan got General Tso's Chicken which came with steamed broccoli and rice, and I got Hibachi Chicken. Kyoto's pricing on their meals is pretty much the same as Musashi's, But Kyoto has a bigger selection of entrees to pick from. Bryan's chicken was really good, but his broccoli was WAY to crunchy, like inedible crunchy. My meal was pretty good too, but my chicken was very dry and almost looked like the canned chicken that you buy to make a quick chicken salad, so I wasn't impressed with that.

I was very impressed though that their hibachi included carrots in the vegetables, it was a nice edition.





Lastly we both ordered one appetizer to go, I got Crab Rangoons (my favorite!) and Bryan got a Soft Shell Crab. We were going to wait til we got home to try these things out. Needless to say, I was very impressed by their Rangoons, they were a different shape than what I normally find around here, most of the time they're in triangles while Kyoto's were more of a bunched up baggie. I was also very impressed at how fresh and moist they stayed all the way home. After a few minutes, most Rangoons get dried out and tough to eat, but they were so awesome! Bryan said his crab was alright (I didn't try any) but he wasn't fond of the crust they put on before deep frying.

I liked reviewing this restaurant a lot and look forward to doing more reviews for my blog in the future.