Vege Bar Mitsubashi: Needs a bit of work on seasoning

Area:  about 100m south of Kokusai Center Station 国際センター駅
Restaurant:  Vege Bar Mitsubachi  ミツバチ
Website and Info:  http://www.a-round1995.com/mitsubachi/access.html

Hours:  Weekdays and Sat  5pm-1am, Sundays and Holidays 5pm-12am



Although I made it in time for lunch, it was close to the end, so the salad bar was a bit scarce.  Luckily I could still take a bit of everything, except for the steamed bagna cauda veggie area (only renkon, or lotus root left).  The renkon was nice and soft but not mushy.  I dressed my salad with a bit of yuzu kosho dressing (Japanese citrus and pepper) and with plain olive oil with herbed salt.  The salt went nicely with the  olive oil, and even though yuzu kosho itself is usually very high in sodium, as a dressing (mixed with oil), it was nice.  The French dressing was like a creamy caesar, mislabeled perhaps.  I preferred the milder herbed salt to the too salty rose salt.

For the main, the paella had a thin layer of crispy tomato flavored rice. The crispiness (from being placed on a hot plate) was the best part.  It was topped with daikon, carrots, zucchini, and peppers, all of which were all kind of dried out due to the oven baking. It probably could have used some oil and salt seasoning.  The seafood, mussels, clams, shrimp were meaty and moist  They imparted their seafood flavor nicely on to the rice.  The clams baked into the rice so somehow they had a nice chewiness to them.  This paella was a bit too under seasoned though. 

I decided to give this restaurant another try. First I ordered a vegetable tapas plate.  You get to choose 3 (\480) from a list.  First, the tako (octopus) and celery; the orange peel added a nice touch to the light marination.  The spinach with cream cheese was basically just cream cheese mixed with mayo; where was the spinach?  The cauliflower mousse at first was nice because I thought it was a puréed cauliflower but then I realized it was just a tiny bit of cauliflower mixed with whipped cream.  I guess I ordered 4 tapas', but I don't remember how much it was.  The broccoli and shrimp had a typical ebi-mayo sauce (a dish found in most Chinese food restaurants here, the sauce consisting of mostly mayo and a bit of ketchup).  

The smoked tuna (\580) was so salty that I asked them if that's the way it's supposed to be.  They took away the plate and offered to do it again, but when they brought it back out again it was missing all the veggies that I was looking forward to eating!  This time it was seasoned with olive oil, and was slighty better, but still was pretty salty.

With the patio feel, this restaurant could be a nice place to sit and relax and enjoy the food, but only if the food was done a tad better.