Gordon Y.
Yelp
Cuisine: 8
Service: 9
Decor: 8
Value: 9
Overall: 9
I'm not a huge fan of buffets or AYCE restaurants because the quality always suffers. However, I will make an exception for this restaurant because they serve high quality ingredients, for a reasonable price, and it's freaking delicious.
Hot pots are now dime a dozen in NYC, especially Flushing. Mikiya is unique because it's a Japanese version called shabu shabu, which translate into swoosh swoosh. This popular franchise's main draw is their AYCE wagyu beef, from USA, Australia, and even Japan. However, there are plenty of seafood options as well if you don't enjoy beef.
For our first visit, it wasn't a hard choice, five of us were there to celebrate a birthday and ordered the highest priced option ($98) that included unlimited amounts of everything. They have three other levels that were $45, $55 and $78. Also, they have membership prices that were 10-15% off.
Mikiya only has four soup bases. I highly recommend the spicy miso, which added fantastic flavor to everything we put in the broth. For a change of pace, I liked cooking the beef in the sweeter sukiyaki broth and then dipping the meat in raw egg yolk before eating over a small bite of rice. Though I prefer the other soup bases, the tomato and house broths were both decent too.
As for the beef, we completely skipped the American stuff and barely got any Australian wagyu to try. However, we didn't hold back on the crown jewel of our meal, Japanese A5 wagyu. We got all three available cuts, but feasted mostly on the chuck ribeye and shoulder.
I have had my fair share of Japanese wagyu in the US and overseas. This may not be up there with Kobe or Matsusaka, but it's definitely solid. It's Miyazaki after all, just the cuts are not from the best regions of the cattle. I would say it felt like similar quality to what I got locally in Kyoto or Hokkaido. Anyway, for the AYCE price, it was certainly impressive to me. If cooked properly to a nice medium, much of the fat will have melted away, leaving a super tender and tasty piece of beef.
Another beef item that we liked was the wagyu bone marrow, though we didn't want to fill up on such a rich food too quickly, so only had two to share. The wagyu nigiri is also a filler since there is so much rice, we only had a few, which were just okay anyway. Wagyu tartare was decent, but the tartlet it came in was not so good.
Like I said before, if you don't like beef, the seafood for the hot pot was surprisingly great. We ordered a mixed seafood platter that came with scallops, abalones, snow crab legs, clams, oysters and shrimps. We really enjoyed the scallops and abalones, which we ordered a few extra rounds as the night went on.
Btw, if you like seafood, their raw sweet shrimps with ponzu & wasabi stem was a winner. For the sushi/sashimi lovers of the group, both of the salmon and yellowtail carpaccio were fresh. On the other hand, I would skip the cooked seafood items like the lobster tails (previously frozen), snow crab chawanmushi (tiny bit of crab, mostly just steamed egg custard), grilled fish collar (wrong part, overcooked), and shrimp tempura (way too much batter).
Finally, there are stations where you can pick up various things like sauces, fried foods, wagyu curry, minced wagyu, hot pot veggies, ice cream, and desserts. We barely touch any of these fillers.
The whole experience was made better by our wonderful server Johnny, who was friendly, funny and entertaining to chat with. He helped guide us through the evening with great suggestions and made everyone feel very comfortable. All in all, this meal was outstanding.