Yellowfin Senopati

Yellowfin's open kitchen.

As a food blogger these days, there are quite a lot of food-tasting invitations. It's almost like every week, there is another invitation or request for food product review in my inbox. It's always interesting to test out food at a new place, not only because we can try and review the food, meet new people, but also because we can share our experiences of how the restaurant treated us, the food bloggers.  

One such recent experience was when I was invited by Yellowfin, a Japanese restaurant located near the SCBD area. Three weeks ago, I received an email with a subject "Intimate Blogger Lunch Gathering With Yellowfin" from the OPCO media relationship assistant. That email was more likely an introduction letter of the company that owns Yellowfin. At the end of it, it mentioned I should contact them to RSVP, but didn’t specify any date for this lunch gathering. I emailed them asking when this event would be held. Later on, I got the reply for a date that I couldn't come. Fortunately, the date was changed and I found out, Dino also received the invitation, thus we decided to go together. 

We arrived exactly at 1 pm, the appointment time, with hungry tummies. The restaurant was really swarming with people. To our surprise, the waitresses who greeted us had completely blank expressions when we told them that we had come for food-tasting invitation. Obviously, the management didn't inform anyone at all that we were coming. Luckily, we managed to get one of the last two tables available, where we could sit and wait while they were cross-checking with the management. It took almost 30 minutes of waiting before the restaurant manager came to us.

A few minutes later, we were served two dishes. Dino and I really enjoyed them. They were really delicious.

Buta Bara Jalapeno - Rp. 42.000

Pork Belly with Jalapeno Butter. Perfect tender that melted nicely inside my mouth.

Gindara Saikyo Yaki - Rp. 165.000

Grilled Black Cod Marinated with Saikyo Miso for 2 nights, was so appetizing.

After the two dishes, we waited 15 minutes for other dishes to come out but nothing was served anymore on our table. I called the restaurant manager, asked him what would be the next dish. I was stunned when the restaurant manager told me that he was only instructed to serve two dishes for us. I briefly told the restaurant manager that usually for food-tasting invitations, either we choose by ourselves from the menu or the restaurant prepares a set menu starting with an appetizer, followed by main course and dessert. The restaurant manager called the management for a confirmation. Anyway, I talked to him again and said if this is the restaurant’s policy to only serve two kind of dishes to be reviewed, it was fine for us. But the restaurant manager said that he would serve us some other more dishes.

Despite the mishap of the miscommunication in the beginning of the food-tasting experience, the restaurant manager made up for those issues by overly generous and kind, insisting us to try other kinds of dishes, even beyond what we expected. I was really impressed by the hospitality that we received from the restaurant manager. The food in general was quite good, although there was nothing really to shout about except for the first two dishes, which were the highlight dishes of this food-tasting

Tobiko Wakame Salad - Rp. 42.000

Flying Fish Roe and Seaweed Salad with Shoyu Onion Dressing.

 Dory Chili Garlic Sauce - Rp. 65.000

Deep Fried Dory with Chili Garlic Sauce.

Ebi Harumaki - Rp. 48.000

Deep Fried Prawn & Mushroom Springroll with Wasabi Cocktail Sauce.

Hot! Shoyu Ramen - Rp. 55.000

Spicy Chicken Shoyu Ramen (level 2)

This level 2 spiciness used six chilies. Frankly speaking, I couldn't eat it at all because the fiery taste of the chilies.

Volcano Roll - Rp. 40.000

Deep Fried Shrimp Roll with Chopped Fish and Spicy Mayonnaise Sauce.

Green Tea Ogura Dorayaki - Rp. 60.000

Cold Ocha - Rp. 20.000

Porco Rosso - Rp. 35.000

Blackberry syrup, Cranberry juice, Soda water and Grapefruit juice

Castle in the Sky - Rp. 35.000

Peach puree, Peach syrup, Soda water and Grapefruit juice

Sake and Shochu

(Note: Shochu is a Japanese clear distilled spirit similar to vodka. The main difference between sake and shochu: sake  is brewed, whereas shochu is distilled.)

Flavored Shochu - Rp. 50.000/glass

Strawberry and Orange

All prices subjected to service charge & tax.

Current currency: 1 USD = Rp. 9.700

Location:

Yellowfin 
Jalan Senopati No. 42
Jakarta Selatan
Tel: 7220394