review: Orient Express

Orient Express
date of visit: 9/7/08

kiwis:
taste: 4
service: 4
ambience: 4.5

Happy Birthday Ryan! I took Ryan out for his 25th birthday. Old man. We've already eaten sushi here and enjoyed it, but we never had the money or excuse to try the hibachi. So I'm glad it was Ryan's birthday because I really enjoyed our dinner!

We ate really early, right after we left a losing Braves game (we ended up watching the end of it as our seats were in perfect view of a flatscreen tv). The service was really good, but I have to take a kiwi off because our waitress messed up our order (but caught it early enough to not affect our meal). I really really liked our hibachi chef, JoJoe. Not only did he share the name of the Braves pitcher that day, he was also half filipino! He made fun of my lack of tagalog speaking skills. And he pulled the ancient trick of pretending to squirt me with sauce. Yes, I freaked out and let out a little squeal. But then we all had a good laugh. Funny thing is that I warned Ryan that sometimes the fun hibachi chefs will do that. I fell for it anyway!

The food was great! I always enjoy the ginger dressing on the salad. The soup was decent, nothing to write home about. We tried 2 sushi rolls: your standard Philly roll and the more adventurous Orient Express roll. The Orient Express roll wasn't really a roll, it was more of a tall stack cut into slices that resembled train cars. Which was really cute seeing as we were eating in a train car. I guess I should have mentioned that earlier...the charm of Orient Express is that it's a big silver train car divided into 3 dining rooms (Chinese food, sushi bar, hibachi grill). It's really cute. I'm a sucker for cute.

Moving on to the hibachi, I got the shrimp & scallop combo and Ryan got the filet mignon & shrimp combo. Our chef also threw some chicken in there just to be nice I guess? I'm so glad he did because the chicken was great! The scallops were the real stars, they were cooked so perfectly, I can't even put into words how good they were! I forgot that there were sauces to dip the meats in, I was so absorbed in eating the delicious scallops. The shrimp & filet were also good. If I had to rank in order of tastiness, I would says scallops, chicken, filet, and shrimp.


Then our waitress brought out a slice of banana sponge cake. It was good, light & airy. The best part was hearing a bunch of cute Asian ladies signing "happy birthday" to Ryan. Such a great memory! Definitely worth the experience...although for a regular dinner, it is a little pricey!

755 club pics

More pics from the 755 club

Watermelon carving on the buffet:


Little leaguers running the bases:


Me & Ryan enjoying the perfect view & perfect weather:


Batting practice:

review: 755 club

755 Club
date of visit: 4/20/08

kiwis:
taste: 3
service: 3
ambience: 5

I love the Braves. So that automatically makes me love the 755 Club. But even as fun as it is, the food & service isn't that great. If you're not a Braves fan, it's definitely not worth it ($30 buffet in the dining room, or $10 sandwich/bar food in the bar area).

First off, you have to be a member of the club, or use someone's tickets to get into the club (I fall into the latter category. It's one of the few perks that makes me like my day job, hehe.) Then, if you want to do the buffet, you have to have a reservation, no walk-up seating. You don't have to do reservations for the bar area, but then the line to be seated is often very long, and people like to take their time.

The buffet is nice...I've had dinner and brunch here now, and dinner definitely has more choices to it. I especially like the cheese buffet and sundae bar that you can get at dinner. But this past weekend we had brunch, which was a little cheaper and not as good. There is a buffet with all kinds of carbs (danishes, waffles, bagels, etc), then a buffet with a lunch type entree (ours had orange glazed red snapper with couscous - I really enjoyed this!), a scrambled egg bar with various toppings (the eggs are fake so I wasn't really into it), a salad/fruit bar, and a meat bar (bacon, sausage, and a carving station with ham). Dessert is separate from the buffet service & costs extra. It's good food, just not spectacular food.

The service is just average as well. Our host was nice, but then we didn't actually see our server until halfway through our first plate. We got plates and waters from a busboy. Our server was a little slow on getting us drinks, and then he asked us if we needed ketchup while he stared at the ketchup bottle already on our table. He wasn't quite all there if ya know what I mean...

But ambience. How can you beat being on top of an awesome ballpark with a great view of the whole field. Watching batting practice...being there before a game with all the excitement and pregame fanfare. I love it!

Here I am at our table in the awesome sunshine (the weather was perfect - sunny & a cool breeze):