Sumo Niku: Unlimited Japanese Barbeque | IS IT WORTH IT?

Cravings won't normally go away unless we give in to them, right? As someone who permanently lives on the rural side of the island, I would appreciate a good find when it comes to restaurants.

Some time ago, I had the chance to meet up @ybanezkim26. If I remember correctly, it was because I had to borrow his Go Pro batteries. And usually, when we meet up, we always end up eating someplace. This time, we decided to go someplace different than our usual go-to restaurant - Red Lizzard in IT Park and satisfy my cravings for unlimited food. I also invited @intoy.bugoy to come with us.

We randomly chose SUMO NIKU because we were within its vicinity. Perhaps we were drawn by its bright LED signage or its bright yellow exhaust fans neatly lined up as clearly seen from the outside window or perhaps seeing the price of Php 549 or $10 for unlimited food was quite the catch? Well, price does matter.

There weren't many people yet as we got inside. There were a couple of empty tables but we chose the far end table so that we wouldn't be disturbed. Once we settled in, we were then instructed by one of the servers to order food by writing down the number of orders we would want per meat or dish. And so we did.

Not sure what the difference was with this Unli Japanese BBQ resto but the variety of meat seems to be all the same as that of Unli Korean BBQ restaurants. 😅 Anyways, there were "7 kinds of pork, 4 kinds of beef, 2 kinds of chicken & 2 kinds of seafood with unlimited rice, side dish, soup & mozzarella cheese" to choose from as advertised. All these for the said price would surely make people flock to this restaurant. However...

After filling our order with what we thought was already sufficient for me and @ybanezkim26, the server laid on our table what was inevitably a disappointing lack of meat or food per tray. If you will look closely at one serving, it would just have 2 or 5 pieces of pork or beef and 1 piece of chicken! My jaw dropped. This wasn't what I expected or probably because of what I'm used to in other "Unli BBQ" restaurants, or perhaps they were just the conservative type with their supply?

We started cooking the meat which took some time while I continue to complain about how small the servings were. Even the serving of lettuce and kimchi was shameful! Talk about "unli" mozzarella cheese which was just half of an inch in thickness in its very small aluminum cup. I couldn't wrap up why they prefer to serve small amounts of food.

Anyways, after realizing that it would be tiring to constantly reorder dishes, I & Kim decided to just order plenty of meat, side dishes, etc. on the second round while waiting for @intoy.bugoy. And that took away my initial dissatisfaction until...

We finally ate our food with its sauces and limited side dishes and it was just...meh... It was unexceptional. The meat though some were marinated was just plain ok. So nothing to fuzz about with this dine-in place in my opinion but that's just me.

@intoy.bugoy arrived and moments later, our second round of food was served. This time around, the surface of the table was all covered with trays of meat and side dishes. Got a little bit of positivity and also nervousness thinking we ordered way too much. @ybanezkim26 made sure to order a lot of Kimchi! Yehey! I would have wanted a lot of Mozzarella cheese but seems like it didn't add anything to the taste. 😂

They charge a fee for leftovers. Well, good thing we had @intoy.bugoy for that 😆 so I continued to assure that we would have clean plates when we finished. By the way, did I mention there is only a limit of 3 hours per table? But that didn't bother me (Again, thanks @intoy.bugoy).

Well, in the end, we had our tummies filled and that was already good enough. The price set for this Unlimited Japanese BBQ is already a fine deal if you are just looking for an "okay" unli food restaurant that will serve its purpose. If not, there are better ones with great taste too. As for me, that will be my first and last visit. 😝