So it was our friend Daria's birthday the other day and Birthday girl was insistant that we took her to Roy's Hawaiian Resturant to celebrate her 2 week late birthday dinner. Even though I drive past it all the time, I've never eaten there before just because it looked like a fancy, "American", expensive place to me. It just reminded me of P.F. Chang's, which is another restaurant I've never been to. I've just looked at their horse statue from up close and also admired their expensive looking to go bags that people take away with them. A general rule of thumb that I go by is to skip out on big, fancy, "American" restaurants because the food is so so and the prices are super expensive but since it was for a birthday, Roy's it was!
We sat down and were given edamame as an appetizer.
Roy's had a special fixed menu for $35, which by the way is a fortune in Asian food. That could feed a village in some poor country for weeks and it could feed me for maybe almost 3 days if I had to starve myself. (I eat a lot if you haven't noticed by now.)
Here is what their winter fixed menu looked like. (appetizer choose one)
- lobster bisque
- rock shrimp tempura
- vietnamese lumpia & bibb lettuce wrap
Seriously... did Mr. Roy and his people just put Vietnamese and lumpia in one sentence? Ugh!!! Super annoying! Vietnamese egg rolls are called Cha Gio and Filipino egg rolls are called lumpia. Both respective egg rolls taste totally different. They don't even use the same ingredients or sauce, or egg roll skin. Mr. Roy sounds like some white guy who just used as many asian terms as he could and stuffed them into one dish. Super annoying.
My friend and I both chose to get the fixed menu and chose the rock tempura as our appetizer. Yum but it was so small. I may weigh 95 pounds but I'd like to be fed properly. Thanks.
Left was my order of tiger shrimp and right was my friend's order of the salmon. My shrimp was okay but my friend's salmon was WAYYYYY better! Darn I was trying to decided between those two. That was totally my bad. I should have gone with my gut and went with the salmon. The other possible choices from the fixed menu were:
Entree (choose one)
- dynamite crusted salmon
- grillled petite fillet
- lemon basted tiger shrimp
- tender braised beef short ribs
Birthday girl decided to skip the fixed menu and just go with this scallop dish.
But for me and Jenny, we both still got to choose a dessert as part of our fixed menu and we both chose the chocolate souffle.
Dessert (choose 1)
- Chocolate Souffle
- Pineapple Cake
Uh... Chocolate Souffle say what? This is obviously not a chocolate souffle. It's more like a lava cake. Not that it wasn't good or anything but I was expecting something that looked like souffle. My mom & I love souffles so we go to wherever we can possibly find just to try their souffles. No bueno for them lying and getting my hopes up. Boo.
And Birthday Girl got a complementary souffle as well as a picture of us they took and put in a Roy's picture frame for her. They also brought out a pineapple cake, which they made sound as though it was free but turns out was not.
Overall we paid for the service and the pretty good food. Too expensive for my taste though especially when they don't know how to properly label their menu. FYI, if you will be visiting Mr. Roy soon, don't forget to tell them it's your birthday even if it's not. Free stuff is awesome. Plus, they don't check ID so everyday can be your birthday! Also please tell him to change the names on his menu. It's annoying me. The only thing Hawaiian about them was the fact that they said Aloha when we walked in and that some of the servers wore Hawaiian print shirts. Happy Eatings you wanna-be "Hawaiians"!
