What will come up into your mind when you see a sumo mascot in front of a restaurant? We personally immediately thought about large quantities of food! And tell you what, the hottest All You Can Eat restaurant is opening in town and say hello to ONOKABE!
ONOKABE is the 9th F&B brand under management of Boga Group, along with the already-famous brands like: Bakerzin, Pepper Lunch, Paradise Dynasty, Paradise Inn, Shaburi, Kintan Buffet, Master Wok, and Boga Catering. I grow up with these brands, and even until now I am *still* one of their loyal customers, so I have to control myself so I don’t spend like, hours, writing about this company here. XD
ONOKABE just had its grand opening on November 2nd, 2016 but the hype is uncontrollable! From what we heard, the queue and waiting list are just overwhelming, despite its location which is quite far from Jakarta. Luckily we got opportunity to visit this place even before it was opened for public and here I am writing about our experience of our first visit.
Meet Mr. Ono, the mascot of Onokabe, you can even take picture with him inside!
The restaurant is surprisingly REALLY big and spacious. Divided into 2 floors, the ground floor is the main dining area with capacity of 360+ person in total, so you can imagine how spacious the area is. The second floor is basically a waiting room with many facilities, but more on that later. 😉
Every table is equipped with grill and suki stove, very convenient! And tell you what, each table has its own access to the conveyor belts, where all the plates containing suki items will be delivered right into your table, so you don’t need to take them from the buffet stations! Cool!
The prices are very cheap reasonable as well, and you can choose to have AYCE for buffet stations (ready-to-eat items only) or with suki & grill.
AYCE Buffet IDR 85,000++/person (lunch and weekdays)
AYCE Buffet + Suki & Grill
- Adult IDR 129,000++/person
- Child IDR 89,000++/person
So, basically the buffet stations are HEAVEN for food lovers because there are more than 100 items available to choose, but before I continue with the ready-to-eat buffet, let’s see what I love the most: Grilled items! It was amazing to see how many options they have, from chicken, beef, fish, even prawns (!!), each marinated with different seasonings like: original, lemon pepper, black pepper, satay sauce, and many others. It is difficult to control yourself from taking much when you have that many options in front of you!
If you simply want to balance your meat intake with more vegetables, worry not, because they have many options from tomatoes to bell peppers, onions to mushrooms!
And basically we had to try every type of meat in different marinades, and although I can’t really say which one is my favorite, they did a pretty good job with the marinating sauce, although the meat can be improved a bit. The problem is that some of the meat didn’t even look like proper meat, more like shredded meat to me. The fish, chicken, and prawns were alright, and in fact, some of the fish cuts were so big they surprised me! XD
The grill is kinda new to me because we need to grill the food on top of paper, which looks like an oil paper. It was a little annoying because the paper moved here and there, but after we put more food to grill, it was okay. It is recommended to grill your stuffs on top of the paper, otherwise it will become sticky. It was quite weird, to be honest, but well, rules are rules. 🙂 And as long as we can still enjoy the grilled items, nothing to complain about! 😉
Next: SUKI!
Who comes here for suki? For me, having both grill and suki on a table is a big, big plus whenever I come to an All You Can Eat restaurant. And better yet, the suki here is completely no hassle, with conveyor belt system that will make the guests feel more convenient in taking the food. I personally really like this concept, although during my visit, the conveyor belts were empty most all the time, thanks to the hungry and curious guests, LOL!
Suki items are delivered through conveyor belts, very convenient!
Variety of sauce to accompany our suki & grill experience, make sure to try the Mr. Ono’s Special Sauce!
For the soup, we can choose up to 2 types of soup from 8 selections: Chicken Collagen Broth, Beef Herb Soup, Tom Yam Kung, Wild Mushroom Soup, Szechuan Hot Boiling Soup, Indonesian Soto Soup, Balinese Betutu Soup, and Miso Seaweed Soup. I chose Chicken Collagen Broth & Tom Yam Kung this time, and loving both of them so much! I am a big fan of these broth in Shaburi (another AYCE shabu shabu joint under Boga Group too), and I think, they are quite similar to Shaburi’s in some senses. The Tom Yam Kung was flavorful although more lime juice can definitely give more kick, but this one was easy to eat and we all loved it!
Beside suki & grill (as if you still can eat other things after all those food!), there are also buffet stations for ready-to-eat food items, covering Indonesian and International dishes; from Fried Rice, Pasta, even Kambing Guling (grilled mutton), which is actually one of Onokabe’s signature dishes! Imagine filling up your plate with all these food before you even start with the suki and grill, if you are a big eater, Onokabe is definitely the one for you!!
One version of fried rice, yes, they have many.
Chawan Mushi
Fried Noodle and Spaghetti Bolognaise, which one do you prefer?
Kambing Guling or Grilled Mutton, one of Onokabe’s signature dishes.
The ready-to-eat buffet station covers so many selections of Indonesian and International dishes, must try!
Fried stuffs for snacks, anyone?
Pop Corn Stand! Told ya they have everything here in Onokabe, LOL!
Not only food and snacks, Onokabe is pretty serious with their desserts selections, too. Rather than just ice creams, they also provide cakes, jajanan pasar, even cotton candy machine! This place is definitely heaven for all family members, from the oldest to the youngest ones!
Cotton Candy in 3 different colors, freshly made upon your order.
Indonesian traditional desserts or jajanan pasar, my favorite!!
Or, if you prefer modern, international dessert like these? You can grab everything you like.
And…. wait until you see this!!
The infamous hedgehog buns from Paradise Dynasty (another Boga Group’s establishment) are here, too! The cute buns are filled with Nutella, and although the size is smaller than the original one, it doesn’t matter because you can have as many as you like! And don’t forget that these hedgehogs here come in many different colors, so cute and tempting!
The second floor is actually a waiting room with so many facilities. It seems like Onokabe has thought about this very carefully to make sure that the guests feel comfortable although they are in waiting list. From free massage chairs to free flow snacks and drinks, kids playground and lego tables, I really respect them for thinking much about the guests. Although Onokabe’s seating capacity is big, but turned out that due to its popularity, guests have to wait to be seated and this second floor becomes a true oasis for them.
Overall, we really enjoyed our first dining experience at Onokabe. As we wrote in our guests comment form that time, we think they need to improve the quality, or at least, the serving size of the meat (beef), and also add more air conditioners in the room. The problem is that the area is too big and we think that the aircons are not enough to keep the temperature down, so it was like very hot and humid inside, especially the area near the glass windows. Not to mention, when we started grilling and eating hot suki, it was like a torture somehow. XD
Nonetheless, we really recommend you to try Onokabe if you have chance, and with such low prices, we are sure everyone can enjoy it as much as we did. Thanks for having us in the pre-opening and wish Onokabe the best of luck!
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** This review is written based on our visit on 30 October 2016.
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ONOKABE ALL YOU CAN EAT SUKI & GRILL
Jl. Alam Utama Kav. 26
Alam Sutera Town Centre
Panunggangan, Tangerang
Banten, Indonesia
Ph. +62 212921 1515
WEBSITE | TWITTER | INSTAGRAM
Opening Hours:
Mon – Sun
Lunch: 11AM – 3PM
Dinner: 6PM – 10PM
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