bex77

All you can eat sushi. And more. For $15.95 at lunch time. The mind boggles.

N. had to run an errand out to Natick on Friday, so I tagged along to visit the land of malls, strip malls and more. His memory being what it is, he remembered a dentist awhile back who said he was from Natick and that it had one of the best Asian buffet/sushi places around. With no other info, he managed to find it, using his trusty web-enabled phone and a search engine. We found it on Rte 9 in the Sherwood Plaza, through the maze of interchanges that makes up Natick's Speen Street, Rte 30, Rte 9 and the Pike.

We went in at the height of Friday lunch hour, at 12:30 pm. It was very busy, but the host seated us immediately and a server came over with water glasses and the drink menu. There were lines at the buffet stations, but they moved along. From afar, the buffet it looks like yet another series of random Asian dishes. But as you get closer, it looks better and better. There are four main lines - sushi, salads, hot appetizers, entrees & soups, and desserts. Everything was clean and fresh, likely due to the high turnover at a busy time. There was a bit of "all gone" but things were refilled by our return trip.

Warning to the folks who expect to see American dishes mixed in at these places - there is none of that. It's all Japanese. There were several items I had never seen on an Asian buffet before, like made-to-order Udon soup with your choice of garnish from shrimp tempura to scallions, and a spicy ceviche with fish, squid and shrimp. Yum. And the sushi section was not just a perfunctory couple of maki rolls, but an entire line with six chefs chopping away on various options.

The highlights were the
- meaty steamed pork gyoza with ginger sauce
- shrimp tempura maki with spicy mayo
- green tea soft-serve ice cream
- sushi from CA to tamago to kanikama to salmon skin
- N. mentioned the beef and chicken teryaki

All this for the cost of 3 or 4 maki rolls.

So two thumbs up for Minado in Natick.

http://minado.com/