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Shogun has a new location now. It has relocated to Dunes Center in Verdun. I was so excited to discover what this place has become. I still had the old location in mind. Do you remember Shogun? The old authentic Shogun. This small place in Downtown Beirut with its cozy warm, softly lit atmosphere where having dinner was a pleasure and a luxury. The old days are gone...
Shogun has been known to be one of the best Sushi places in Lebanon maintaining its position between the top 5 places since it first opened for some time now, but I wasn't ecstatically happy with the new experience.
The first impression is always the one that lasts... -
- I don't like the idea that you have to go into a mall to access to restaurant. A glass door awaits you
- you feel like you are about to enter a cosmetic store.
- It's a big restaurant, but the use of glass is everywhere. The tables are glass, which looks unclean the whole time, the big glass facades with a view of Verdun street...
- I didn't like it especially that the glass affects the sound in the place. You open the door and you enter a room of loud noise. This noise continues to annoy you during the whole lunch. It's like people are standing on top of your head talking directly into your ears.
The menu. I say the menu with stress.
It's a book with endless lines:
Only four pages on the menu have pictures. They appear out of the blue. After more than ten minutes of looking at the book, I decided to choose items from the pictures. But the pictures don't suggest the number of pieces in each order. You have to go back to the name of each item on the list, if you find it to check for the details... then you place your order. This is a mistake which will cost the restaurant a lot. Lebanese are used to having pictures in their menus. I would reconsider this point and make the menu more user friendly. Japanese, Tepeniaki and Chinese in 26 pages reminded me of a geography book at school although I enjoyed reading the history of sushi on the first page.
The menu sections:
Soup, starter & extra sauces, salad, crunchy salad, tempura, rice, sashimi, special sashimi, shogun lounge sushi, nigiri sushi, maki mono (bamboo mat roll), temaki, boat on sail, reopen yaki, set course on the grill, Chinese menu and drinks.
There are details in a restaurant that are unacceptable especially when you're paying $75 a head for lunch with no alcohol bevrages and no desserts:
- The glass tables without table cloth.
- Cheap tissue napkins are used, like the ones you take with you to a picnic. - Looks like an open buffet restaurant at lunch. - Music is very loud.
- A cheap diner style paper covering the chopsticks.
- Paper table mats like at major American diners in town.
We ordered and really loved: Shogun still serves a great Japanese food quality:
- Spicy crunchy salmon salad
- Spicy crunchy white fish salad
- Shake sashimi
- Unagi sashimi
- Sheyen spicy Maki
- Shogun maki
- Kawa maki
- Miso soup
- Duck spring rolls
- Shogun lounge with salmon
- Shogun lounge with scallops
Delicious sushi that makes Shogun a favorite in town, and yes indeed, one of the most expensive sushi restaurants around with a service that does not deserve the price at all. At $75/person, no alcohol and no dessert! That's far too much for this style of a restaurant on the first floor of a mall.
