Tokyo Diner - Harrisburg

Overall Rating: Good but Weird
Highlight: A Vegetarian Chef's Special Roll
Lowlight: Ambiance Not So Hot
Veggie Note: Appearances can be deceiving I guess, but what a treat to have a special roll that was totally vegetarian and right off the menu

Still on a quest for good vegetarian sushi, and this time looking for a place with a hibachi grill for a friend as well (meat eaters - go figure).

Tokyo Diner has multiple locations in the Harrisburg (Central PA) region. They have both a sushi menu, hibachi menu and a few other assorted things. The location we went to, Londonderry Rd in Harrisburg, came across as sort of a dive when we pulled up. It was a little disconcerting and we had some doubts about what we were about to eat. The waitress really struggled with English (we tried to order a Dr. Pepper and she looked at us like we were crazy, I told her it was a kind of soda and she stared right through me like a window pane - we settled for coke, which she knew). FYI - the iced tea was iced green tea, which was good, but not listed that way on the menu, just one of a few Tokyo Diner surprises. The booth we sat in had broken benches and the inside decor wasn't too much nicer than the outside appearances.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Cucumber Salad - There was no indication on the menu of this one, so we were surprised when it came. None of us really ate it because it came with pieces of crab meat mixed in. I picked out a few pieces of cucumber just to try it. It mostly tasted like vinegar, there were a few sesame seeds mixed in. Nothing special as far as we could tell.

Appetizers:

• Edemame - These were fine, needed added salt. They were strangely served upside down (in the shell waste bowl with a plate on top) It kind of gave you the idea that the waitress never had to serve this dish before.

Entrees (what we created anyway):

• Tamago Sushi - tasted fine, the egg looked a little pale
• Inari Sushi - pretty standard, good
• Oshinko Sushi - we custom ordered this, it was listed as a roll option, but to avoid excess seaweed (for those opposed to that sort of thing) we requested it presented as two pieces of sushi instead and they were fine to accommodate that.
• Chef's Special Green Roll - Here was the treat of the evening. It's very rare to find a chef's special roll on the menu that is entirely vegetarian. This was a spinach roll (also something rare) wrapped in thinly sliced avocado (like a dragon roll) and no seaweed! It was very tasty. Everyone at the table tried it and liked it a lot.
• Futo Maki Roll - my non-vegetarian weakness kicking in again (this one has crab in it). I do like a good futo maki roll. This one was okay. I have to mention that I ordered a side of spicy mayonnaise. This was one of the best spicy mayonnaise concoctions I have ever had. Instead of the standard smooth and creamy dip, this was chunky with the bits of hot pepper that was also in the hot sauce they served with the hibachi dishes. It was clearly mixed up by hand and was super spicy. Yum!
• Steak Hibachi - With just onions and broccoli (it was a little too much for our meat eatin' friend - but probably not too much for someone who really loves broccoli - it was good broccoli). It turns out they also put onions in the fried rice so there was also an abundance of onions. The fried rice was really good and the steak was "full of flavor and so tender that it melted in your mouth." That's a meatatarian quote if I have ever seen one. Some other nonsense about no fatty deposits, blah blah gross whatever. There was a desperate attempt made to order it prepared spicy, the waitress said she would bring a side of hot sauce, which ended up needing to be two sides of hot sauce by the time the dish was done. Oh - and this dish was supposed to come with either soup and a salad. The default soup was clear soup, not miso, and the waitress totally forgot to serve it until after she brought the entrees and we reminded her.

Just a few other notes:

I think I added all of my thoughts throughout this time. None of us noticed a bar here (we weren't really looking) but I'm pretty sure it's alcohol free there.

Final Thoughts: So in the end I have to preach the old adage "don't judge a book by it's cover." I wouldn't bring a first date here or encourage a fine dinner here before prom, but the food turned out to be pretty good. There were still no vegetarian specific "entrees" but there was plenty to choose from anyway and we had a good time trying that green roll.

What does good vegetarian sushi look like?

Just a quick aside note...
Sorry we have been out of town and haven't eaten anywhere local lately to review. While we were gone, we went to one of our favorite sushi spots ever, Aoyama in Erie, PA. Strange part of the world for sushi, yes I know, but they do it great! They have a great Vegetarian Sushi Platter, Veggie Roll Platter and lots of vegetarian a la carte options. Here are two pictures of what we ordered. Aside from tasting great, they also put a lot of effort into presentation, neatness and creativity. So for all of you sushi loving vegetarians in Harrisburg, demand better - it does exist!

Hong Kong City - Colonial Park

Overall Rating: Good
Highlight: Variety of Food
Lowlight: Not a fancy dining room
Veggie Note: There are three very different types of cuisine on this menu, so you have to fumble through it to find all of the vegetarian options available, they are not all collected in one place or designated with a symbol. But there are lots of choices.

We were doing a little late evening shopping and were looking for a good option for take out dinner to bring home with us.

Hong Kong City is a fairly standard looking Chinese (American style) restaurant that probably does about 50% of its business in take-out (that was about the average while we were sitting there waiting.) The nice thing here is that they not only have a pretty complete menu of traditional Chinese-American dishes, they also have a small Thai section and a nice sushi bar menu. It's a very plain dining room (although they do try with the typical cheesy decorations). We weren't looking to sit down and eat, so I didn't give it much thought. It's not a fancy restaurant by any means. It was very clean and bright however, I'm not trying to say you shouldn't eat-in there. We walked up to the register to place our order. We were told it would be about 20 minutes, and that was pretty accurate.


We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Nothing complementary came with our take-out food, but I did see a couple eating-in that had crispy noodles and duck sauce on their table, I am assuming that they were served complimentary.
  

Off the Chinese Menu Section:

• Szechuan Style Bean Curd - one of a couple tofu/bean curd dishes available (there was also Hunan style and General Tso's style.) It was spicy, but not too spicy (could have been spicier really). We noticed after ordering that there is a little place on their take out menu that you can check off for how spicy you want your meal. We'll remember that in the future. The tofu was cut into long strips, almost like chicken stir-fry pieces, instead of just being cubed and fried. It was nice to see a detail like that. It makes you feel like they spent time thinking about and preparing the dish. Overall this was a pretty good dish.

Off the Sushi Menu:

• Vegetable Maki Combo - listed as three "vegetable rolls" on the menu, mine was prepared with an avocado roll, an avocado mango roll and a roll with avocado and sliced up pieces of inari (sweet tofu pancake) inside. I love avocado, but this was actually a bit of overload for me. On a positive note though, the avocado was at its peek of ripeness, so buttery and delicious. I had no problem finishing it all in the end. The combo meal also came with miso soup and salad with ginger dressing. Much like my experience at Mikado on 2nd, the dressing here was really chunky and ugly colored on top and then super watery at the bottom. It looks so unappealing. I have had much better looking ginger dressing in my lifetime, but so far I have not found it here in Harrisburg. I will say that while we were wandering the aisles of Costco recently, I noticed a big jug of similarly ugly-looking ginger dressing on the shelf - coincidence? There was no Costco near where we used to live, hmmmm...
• We also ordered some a la carte Inari and Tamago, our two favorite seaweed minimal sushi varieties for my seaweed-averted partner. They were good, as usual. I was reading the specials from the sushi bar, and one of their fancy rolls of the day (The Yellow Submarine) was yellowfin tuna rolled in a yellow soy wrapper. We have seen these fancy alternative sushi wrappers before (and bought a variety pack at Wegman's once). If we could talk the sushi chef into using those wrappers on some veggie rolls, that could really open the door to sushi for the seaweed opposed, and add a little fun to the very green appearance of most veggie sushi.

Just a few other notes:

To give you a rough idea, since the menu is not available online, other vegetarian options included a vegetable choice in all of the standard Chinese-American dishes (lo mein, fried rice, moo shu, egg foo young, etc...). They also had a couple other veggie dishes listed with the bean curd ones (a broccoli dish of some sort - sorry these details have left my brain now). They had Pineapple Fried Rice on the Thai menu (I'd check to make sure this is definitely meat free). The Pad Thai and other Thai dishes did not have veggies or tofu listed as an option, but I'd be willing to bet they would do some substituting for your here. There were not too many other veggie sushi options available. I asked them if they ever have sweet potato tempura rolls as a special and they said yes. I think they were pretty open to special requests here as well. In addition, they had edemame in the appetizer section of the menu.

I feel with any restaurant being managed by folks for whom English is not necessarily their first language (and even in some cases where English is the only language your server has ever spoken) the word vegetarian does not always translate perfectly. Be really careful with dishes marked "vegetable" but not necessarily "vegetarian." Ask questions, be specific, and peek inside your dish before you start chowing down. We had no problems here at Hong Kong City.

Final Thoughts: Trying to not compare Hong Kong City to the fancy, sit-down Asian style restaurants we have been too, this is a really nice place. For take-out or a quick eat-in meal, this is definitely a really nice place. Our food was all very delicious and we had no shortage of vegetarian choices to make. This will definitely be a place we will consider returning to when we're in the mood for take-out.

Okini Pan Asian - Progress (Harrisburg)

Overall Rating: Somewhere around Neutral
Highlight: Sweet Potato Roll
Lowlight: Chinese Eggplant and Limited Veggie Sushi Selection
Veggie Note: There is a “Vegetables” section in the non-sushi part of the menu. There are a handful of vegetable rolls and tamago on the sushi menu

We headed here to continue our quest for good vegetarian sushi.

Okini Pan Asian is a combination Chinese, Japanese, Thai restaurant in the Progress area of the Harrisburg suburbs. We were seated right away and the servers were very quick to our table. It was a little dark and the whole restaurant has an old carpet on the floor, a little bit icky. We’re not big fans of carpets in restaurants, kitchens and bathrooms. The restaurant was generally very comfortable and clean however. When a table finished and left, all of the available servers flocked the table and cleaned it immediately so it stayed very nice the whole time we were there.

We had the following:

Complimentary:

• Edemame – as soon as we sat down we were served a bowl of warm salty edemame pods. They were very tasty and a nice treat. It was odd that edemame were also listed for $5 in the appetizer section of the menu. I guess some people just can’t get enough soy beans.

Soup:

• Miso – there were no sushi entrees that were vegetarian, so I ordered a bowl of soup as an extra. It was pretty standard miso soup. Some of the miso wasn’t mixed in very well so it was in little clumps I had to break up, but otherwise it was the same as everywhere else.

Entrees:

• Chinese Eggplant in Garlic Sauce – listed as spicy in the menu (with the ubiquitous pepper icon). It was definitely not what my partner was hoping for. The sauce was not spicy at all and was actually super sweet and syrupy. The eggplant, bell peppers and onion were all very fresh though, so they may satisfy a different pallet. This came with a bowl of white rice as well.

Sushi A la Carte:

• Tamago – if it’s available, we’ll probably always order this. It was average here.
• Vegetable Supreme Roll – Asparagus, cucumber, avocado and oshinko prepared like a hand roll, very nice presentation. A little too much cucumber made it kind of watery but the ingredients were very fresh and crispy.
  
• Green Roll – this was interesting and something I’ve never had before. It was a roll of nothing but seaweed salad (the kind you usually eat in a bowl – salty/stringy seaweed). It wasn’t fabulous because the seaweed was a bit overwhelming, but it was definitely something different and fun to try.
  
• Sweet Potato Roll - my weakness. I love sweet potato tempura wrapped up in a sushi roll. Especially when it is freshly warm out of the frying oil like it was here. Again the presentation was very nice. I really enjoyed this roll.

Dessert:

• Fried Banana – the only dessert available was this tempura fried banana. It was cut into 1 inch pieces and fried and then set back in the peel which was cleverly peeled to look like a snail or something else with maraschino cherry antennae. Then the whole thing was doused in whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Pretty tasty but it definitely needed the whipped cream and chocolate since the banana itself wasn't very sweet and could have maybe benefitted from a little added sugar. But this was really fun and tasty overall. I love tempura fried anything for the most part. I once had a dream that I was making a salad with tempura fried root vegetables on top. I was particularly interested in the tempura fried red beets I had conjured up, some day I plan to really try that. I’ll bet it would be good. (end of dream sequence)

Just a few other notes:

This is another BYOB restaurant, we didn’t take anything with us, but the couple behind us had a bottle of wine and the restaurant was quick to provide glasses for them.

There were about 6 dishes total in the “vegetables” section of the menu. There were a few curries in the Thai section and tofu was not a listed option, however it was included in a few other dishes so I am sure it could be easily substituted for one of the meaty options given.

Aside from the rolls I ordered, there was really only an avocado roll to complete the vegetarian selections. There was also no inari in the a la carte menu.

Final Thoughts: I guess the quest for a good vegetarian sushi joint continues… stop here for a sweet potato roll someday, you’ll thank me.

Miyako Sushi on Second - Downtown Harrisburg

Overall Rating: Boo!
Highlight: hmmm?
Lowlight: no creativity, limited selection, hidden meat
Veggie Note: This is not a sushi bar for vegetarians, plain & simple


We stopped here for dinner while walking back to our car, on the way home from a Senators game.


I know what you're thinking, sushi and vegetarian don't exactly seem like a natural combination. On the contrary my vegetarian friends. I am a sushi addict! Many sushi restaurants (even Wegmans) offer a variety of vegetable only sushi and handrolls to enjoy. Unfortunately, Miyako Sushi on Second was NOT one of those places. (they do not have their own website that I could find, so the link here will actually take you to another local restaurant review site for your enjoyment). Let's start at the beginning though, shall we...


This downtown sushi bar is set in a long narrow location, so when you walk in all you see is the sushi bar, but hidden behind the kitchen, down a long hallway, there is also a dining room with tables. We sat in the dining room so that we could take time to look at the entire menu. I was so disappointed in the selection of vegetarian sushi. There is so much to be creative with here, and they really do not take advantage. I am very used to seeing hand rolls and individual pieces of sushi that include mango, sweet potato, asparagus, pickled vegetables, tempura vegetables, mushrooms, leafy greens and so much more. Not here.


We had the following:


Complimentary:

• Nothing complimentary served here

Appetizer:

• Vegetable Gyoza - slightly thicker than a wonton wrapper, gyoza (dumplings ) can be filled with just about anything. Lots of times it's shrimp or pork. This time we were excited to see a vegetable variety. They were very green when they were served, which caught both of us off guard. It is fortunate that we explore all new foods before just popping them in our mouths. We made a terrible mistake of assuming that labeling something as vegetable on the menu implied it was not meat, we were very wrong. There were little pieces of meat (pork maybe?) strewn throughout the dumplings. Too much really to pick out (if you tolerate that kind of thing). Needless to say, we didn't eat them. It was late at night and we were tired, so we did not comment on them to our waiter, just let them sit. Probably a mistake, but they were only $3.25.

Entrees:

• Vegetable Maki Combo - This was the only choice in the sushi entrees section that was vegetarian. There was no sushi platter, just this combination of three vegetable rolls (unspecified). When it arrived, I was not overwhelmed with joy. The three rolls looked almost identical and the plating was incredibly poor. Let's start with appearance. There are lots of neat sauces used in making sushi rolls; salty glazes, garlic sauces and my favorite spicy mayonnaise. None of that was included on my plate, not in side dishes or as a decorative swirl under my vegetable rolls. The rolls themselves were small and unimpressive. They included a very traditional looking vegetable roll with nothing but avocado and cucumber, more avocado and cucumber with mango added, and the last one - avocado and cucumber with sundried tomatoes (I think). No carrots, no traditional pickled vegetables (oshinko, daikon, etc...), no greens - just plain boring. I immediately asked for a side of spicy mayonnaise. For the first time in my life, I did not finish my maki. I was so bored of the repeating flavors that I gave up with three pieces left. There was nothing special about any of this dish.


• Al a Carte Inari and Tamago - my partner has some kind of aversion to seaweed, it causes an upset stomach, so we have spent some time seeking out ways for both of us to enjoy sushi bars so that I can feed my addiction. Two of our favorite seaweed free/minimal choices are inari and tamago. Inari is made with a fried tofu pancake (which opens like a pouch when cut in half - reminiscent of a pita). It is thin and delicate, and typically covered in a combination of soy sauce and sugar that makes the whole thing sweet and tasty. The pouch is opened, stuffed with rice and then rolled shut. If you are a very strict vegetarian/vegan, you may want to ask if they use Dashi (fish stock) in the pouch marinade as this is not unheard of. Tamago is an egg custard, chilled and sliced into a long strip and then laid on top of a ball of rice (traditional sushi style). It's tied on with a piece of nori (seaweed), but my partner works around that and leaves self- described "little seaweed carcasses" behind. Tonight, both types of sushi were made well, however the inari pancakes were a little dry, probably reaching the end of their life-span behind the sushi bar. Again, nothing fancy about the plating of this sushi.


• Miso Soup and Salad - my maki platter came with soup and salad. There are no choices here (not that uncommon) you get Miso soup and a basic house salad with ginger dressing. If you love salty foods, you would love miso soup. The broth is made from miso (soy bean) and it contains scallions, tofu pieces, and seaweed. Again, this is a place to clarify ingredients as occasionally bonito flakes (fish) are added to miso soup. I love miso soup too much and was too hungry to ask and risk not eating it. I am an ignorant vegetarian, I know it. The salad was typical for a cheap house salad (one tomato, a cucumber, and lettuce). The ginger dressing here, compared to many other Japanese restaurants, is very blah. It is watery but full of grated ginger. So the ginger sat on top of my salad in a very unappealing orange mass and when I reached the bottom, the lettuce was floating around in the watery component, not pretty.

Just a few other notes:

Miyako Sushi does have a liquor license so you can order a Japanese beer (or one of a poor selection of American varieties), a glass of wine or some Sake or Japanese vodka.

For those of you who are fish eaters - the group of five at the table behind us was raving about their choices, so you might do well here. I doubt the plating efforts are any better with or without fish, but I may be wrong. I should point out that one of this party's chairs broke and he fell right on the floor and this did not ruin their evening, so it must have been good for them.

Final thoughts: Short and sweet, this is not the place for vegetarian sushi. We will move on and probably never return here.