Roy's Restaurant (La Jolla) - dinner

Dennis and I have date nights for celebrating special occasions and have found ourselves at Roy's La Jolla a couple of times (including their happy hour recently). From Faye's Fork, I found out they had recently rebranded this location to "Roy Yamaguchi’s Pacific Rim Cuisine" which is quite a mouthful! After a quick phone call today, I found out that it was only a test run and had been changed back to just Roy's. Thank goodness!

For our most recent visit, we decided to try their Sunday Special 2 course, which contains a salad appetizer and a two meat entree for $29.95. They were out of ceasar salad, Dennis's favorite type of salad, so we went with the Baby Greens Salad. The dressing was described as a Japanese Yuzu Honey Emulsion but had a slightly citrus-y taste, like a tangerine. It was spread over an otherwise very simple salad with shaved carrot, cucumber and grape tomatoes. I feel like the ceasar would have been better had it been available but at least this one was a reasonable size.

This is half of my main entree, the Misoyaki Butterfish. I was checking the menu online and noticed that butterfish was in quotes! So in reality it's Alaskan black cod! I never knew this but found it listed that way on our Roy's misoyaki butterfish recipe. Anyway, it's always delicious, super tender and flakes and melts in your mouth. On the side was baby bok choy and furikake rice. I didn't really care for the rice because it was sort of like a chewier block of grains!

This is the other half of my main entree, the Braised Short Ribs. The tasty beef, surrounded by its own braising sauce, fell apart so easily. It was beautifully paired with creamy mashed potatoes and some broccolini. I thought the main course meats was scrumptious and made up for the poor appetizer salad!

Dennis ordered the Seared Sea Scallop. The sauce around the scallops reminded me of a sweeter cinnamon. These were three very large scallops with a good amount of sear for the size. It felt a slight bit gritty while eating though because there was sea salt on it (or what i assume to be sea salt!) I sure hope it wasn't sand!

We also had the complimentary Edamame which has seasoning I really like. The secret ingredient is shichimi (Japanese red pepper seasoning) with the recipe available here.

We also ordered the Lakanilau Roll, which contains wagyu beef, snow crab, tempura asparagus and avocado in it. The beef is extremely soft and the little green sprouts were interesting. It's a different taste since it's not the typical sushi fish but with a higher price of $16 per roll, I probably wouldn't order it again.

We were mainly here to celebrate a birthday and the staff brought out this candlelit surprise.

The dessert was like a mini pecan pie with very little of the sugary sweet filling! I liked that the nuts were glazed slightly with the easy to bite outer crust. We were more or less full at the end of our meal.

To our surprise, the waitress brought a roy branded paper picture frame with a picture of us (taken earlier in the evening). On another occasion, they had printed a 'happy anniversary' message stuffed into our menu. I've always been satisfied with the service here because they put in the effort to make a customer happy and return to the place! For the deal-hunter in me, we used costco gift cards ($80 for $100 worth) and made a reservation with a code for $20 off $40. The total was still around $75 after tax and tip but the food was super tasty and Dennis had a great birthday dinner! Give us butterfish any day but none of that plain salad!