Wife and I went to Todai in Woodfield Mall yesterday evening.

Good fresh seafood should smell like the sea, upon entering Todai it smelled very fishy, not a good sensory introduction. All my other senses were pleased, it is large, clean, w/good displays.

We arrived at 5:15pm and there was no wait although it was filling fast.

As you are escorted to your table the host will hold your ticket/bill above their heads. I guess to make the other servers aware that there are new patrons being seated. Before you are seated they asked if we had been before, we said we had not and were given a brief tour of the layout.

There were three areas, a hot food, salad/sushi, and cold seafood/fruit bar. There are definite places to enter for each.
As w/any buffet, you pick up your plate and go.

Wife went for the salad/sushi area, I for the hot food.

Hot food: Fried Rice, Sukiyaki noodles, teriyaki chicken (cut up into chunks), teppen yaki (cut up beef and veggies), fried lemon shrimp, green lip mussels w/a mayo-like sauce over them, whole shrimp(heads as well) cut in 1/2 w/the same sauce over them, dungeness crab, white rice, miso soup, tempura sauce, and tempura.

Tried all. The mussels were great! Every shrimp I had was very mealy/mushy, not a good experience. Dungeness crab was very good. Miso was acceptable as well as the tempura.

Wife brought back an assortment of sushi. I now understand the above negative comments. It was ok, but being sushi lovers it was below par for us.

I went to the cold bar for some Jonah crab claws, snow crab legs and boiled shrimp. The Jonah crab is almost like a stone crab claw, not bad (but stone crab is devine). Snow crab just never pushes my button, it was so-so. Boiled shrimp were fresh and firm, but on the very small size (its a buffet so one can understand).

The desserts are just the way most should be at a buffet, they are displayed in very small slices/pieces so it is easy to sample much w/o really gorging oneself. As usual there were some that were bad, some so-so and some that were good. One standout was the individual creme brulee, VERY tasty.

There was also a crepe area, but I did not investigate that.

Noticeably absent from the line up was any form of lobster. Lobster is displayed in the Todai posters/signage as you walk in, but nowhere to be found on the buffet. The word lobsters had been crossed out on the posters so I don’t believe they serve them anymore.

During our meal, a line formed to get into Todai, a very large one (saturday evening at a large mall). I noticed that the lines for the various stands were now 10-15 people deep. The line moves, but I was sure glad we were not going up for anymore food.

Seeing as a friend who only eats seafood and veggies took care of our dog for 10 days while we were in HI, we will go back and treat him to Todai, but otherwise probably will not go back.

Admission price for adults is $24.98 for dinner. Drinks (both non-alcohol and alcohol) are extra, they do offer Asian/domestic beers.

[This message has been edited by Sweet Willie (edited 04-13-2003).]