For mother’s day this year, we somehow ended up at Margaret Kuo’s Akari Room in Wayne. My aunt picked it. But then she didn’t end up going. But we had to go anyway. That’s ok, the old lady would have picked sushi anyway. This is on the second floor of the chinese part of Margaret Kuo’s. It’s swanky. There’s a large sushi bar and plenty of tables and traditional style booths.
The miso soup – quite respectable. Mom didn’t complain about it being too salty or anything. It was just right.
Since I always like to try the agedashi tofu, I tried it here too. And it was good! It was nice and hot and the sauce was spot on.
Mom’s sushi dinner, which is usually her go-to at any sushi joint. Everything was good and fresh.
As for me, I went with a grilled chilean sea bass in an orange miso sauce. This was a great big honkin piece of fish! And it tasted great too. The sauce was just a tiny bit on the orangey side, just enough. The veggies were great too. All in all, this was good food with good service and a fancy atmosphere.

I somehow ended up at an all you can eat korean bbq spot one night. I wasn’t really prepared for this, but I went along for the ride. It’s in Upper Darby, and the last time I was at this location, it was just a regular korean restaurant. But now, it’s for the gluttons.
It’s straight up buffet style and you can load up on whatever you want. There’s a bunch of different korean banchan dishes, and most of them are only ok. They had my favorite spicy marinated raw blue crab, but it really wasn’t that great. The best banchan they have, by far, is the radish kimchi. It’s really good here! There’s also a few soups. There’s also random chinese and japanese style dishes like teriyaki sicks and lo mein. There are some fruits for dessert and one of the randomest things I found and thoroughly enjoyed – fried plantains. But really, you come here to eat some darn meat.
So you grab whatever meat you want, but don’t make the mistake that some of my tablemates did. They just grabbed giant piles of random meats before really determining what they liked. And remember, you can only cook so much of it at a time, so otherwise, it’s just going to sit at your table. So of course, we got some of the traditional korean bbq short ribs. And don’t worry about doing the cooking because the servers will actually do the cooking for you. They flip the meat, make sure it’s cooked, and cut it into bite-sized pieces for you. So there’s actually very little for you to do.
The rib meat is seasoned ok and tastes ok, but it’s a bit on the thin side. But it does help cook a whole lot faster.
Here’s some of the 6265 lbs of pork belly that we had to cook up. Ultimately, I kept feeding it to H/A and somehow, he was able to eat most of it. It was quite amazing to witness, and also truly disturbing. The pork belly is good, but one should really only eat so much. There was just way too much of it to be healthy.
They also have shrimp!
And also some chicken and plain meat. I think there’s also spicy marinated pork, but I didn’t get to try any of that. The chicken looks a bit odd when raw, and even odder when cooked, but it’s pretty tasty and tender and flavorful. It’s a good place to go if you want to try all different kinds of meat and be a total glutton. If you eat enough meat, it can be a pretty good value too.

H/A and I headed over to nearby Saffron to stuff our faces. On a weeknight they were still doing brisk business. It’s nice to see this place busy. They had some monthly specials, as usual. When H/A ordered, the server complimented him on his pronunciation of the indian dishes.
we got one of the appetizer specials, the chicken and shrimp chaat. It’s a cold dish comprised of cubes of chicken tikka and shrimp tossed with cucumbers, tomatoes, chaat masala, and a touch of sour cream. It was ok but this didn’t excite me much. I think it would have been better just as a veggie salad as the chicken and the shrimp didn’t really kick this up any notches.
Here is the boti kabab masala. This is lean cubes of lamb marinated for 24 hours in yogurt and spices, baked on a skewer in a tandoor, and then finished in a tangy spicy sauce. The lamb was unbelievably tender and the flavor of this was pretty good. And there’s no veggies, it’s just straight up tender hunks of lamb and sauce, perfect for dipping your naan into! In this case, I got the spinach and cheese naan again. I had liked it the last time and I think it’s a nice alternative to plain naan or garlic naan. It has fresh spinach and homemade cheese. Eat it while it’s hot, people!
But you know what, hands down, with no doubt in my mind, the best dish at Saffron is the kadai paneer makhani. It’s got homemade cheese cubes cooked with bell peppers, onions, tomatoes, and freshly ground spices. There’s just something about this sauce that is unlike any other indian dish. It’s just the best! I would put this sauce on anything if I could buy it or figure out how to make it. It’s not like the sauce that came with the lamb, it’s not masala, it’s not korma, it’s not butter, it’s just the best indian sauce ever. Service is just fine here. They brought out the wrong bread at first but then fixed that right away. And they’re pretty good about filling up your waters. I will come back here for the kadai paneer makhani forever!