Restaurant Review: Cicada

Mishkins can't do a table bigger than 6, I am still dying to go but on this occasion we were more than 6 so decided on Cicada. Part of the Ricker Restaurants chain which also includes E&O, Eight Over Eight and the Great Eastern Dining Room, so although I was disappointed at not going to Mishkins this was a good alternative.

In terms of ordering we opted for starters of everything to share. Chicken san choi bau, chili salt squid, sweet shrimp with chili mayo, roast duck rolls...not for the non-fish or game lovers. The best of this was the shrimp and squid. The chicken was strange. The lettuce served with wasn't crisp enough to act as its casing, and there was a lot of liquid. Still it tasted nice and didn't offend. We had also ordered edamame beans, these didn't actually show up.

Chicken

Shrimp

Chicken plated on it's limp lettuce

Squid

Family style

Duck rolls

The mains arrived really staggered some things arrived super fast like sushi rolls (spicy tuna for me) while some thing's such as rice and the last meal were 10-15 minutes later. Not ideal. Everything however tasted pretty good. The salmon tartare was incredibly fresh and flavoured with a lot of dill, which works for me. The Singapore noodles were another stand out, they had lots of prawns in as well as meat, so thumbs up for that.

Spicy Tuna Rolls

Salmon tartare

Singapore noodles

The quality of the food over all was average. Obviously as a big sushi fan I'm pretty picky. The rice with these tuna rolls was hard not melt in the mouth soft and sticky as it should be.

Drink wise I opted for Sake. It took a while to arrive as they hadn't any already chilled. I've never had it straight from the bottle before, usually it comes in the nice proper tumbler, so I'm not actually sure if it's usually shaken. The bottom of the bottle was very thick and milky and not all that pleasant.

Overall the meal was pretty good, not the best food I've ever had, not the best service (it was particularly slow, generally I don't mind as we weren't in a rush but we had to try and grab attention more than once.) Also my chair was balanced precariously on the end of a ledge and yes I did fall off. No fault of my own, I wasn't drunk it was just a strange place for a chair. Would I go back? Yes but I won't be rushing. Would I go back if I was aiming to impress? Probably not...

Atmosphere: 2/5, there was nothing to it. Luckily we were a large group so made our own
Food: 3/5
Drink: 2/5
Overall: 2/5

Marked down for the chair falling..ouch.

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