Hana Express

I used to go here a lot when I worked at FYE. It was a really good place that gave you a LOT of food for your money. I used to get the steak and/​or chicken hibachi and I was always satisfied with my meal, and it was always very filling.

The restaurant is much better, but its the only fast food joint in the mall that makes sushi fresh everyday, Ive seen it made. They are a Little slow if your there on an hour lunch, but you know its freshly cook to order unlike the other Asian restaurants in the mall. I have to say their tempura is one the better dishes from Hana express and the full restaurant across the street from the mall.

We past Albany on the way to Montréal and had to stop somewhere for dinner and this mall seems like the only option we could find. We headed to the food court and did a quick browse and found 1 place named Cajun chicken but they sell Kung Pao Chicken?! Right across from it, there is another place offering Orange Chicken but is clearly not named in any way related to Chinese. I determined this food court is not going to offer me authentic cuisine in any sense. I saw Hana and figured they cannot screw up some tapayaki beef, can they?
I ordered the safest thing on the menu, which is tapayaki beef with vegetable and fried rice. The cashier was pretty nice but I suspect that is only because I am Asian too. He probably hasn’t seen one for days or months. The food came in tin foil plate and the beef is overly sweet. The sauteed vegetable is just white cabbage soaking up the leftover sauce from the tapayaki. Fried rice is merely rice with plenty of soy sauce without any existence of eggs, ham or anything for that matter.
I am so glad I don’t need to return to have fake Asian food again. At least not anytime soon.

CLOSED. This space is now Montréal Poutine.
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Located in the Crossgates Mall Food Court, the Hana Express (former Chicken Now) food counter offers a streamlined menu of hibachi style meals, sushi, tempura, udon noodle soups, salads, and appetizers. Fried ice cream is also offered here. The food is cooked to order on the grill, a similar concept to Sarku Japan, except less rush-​rush here.
After some morning shopping, I was getting hungry and took a walk through the food court, in anticlockwise fashion. I actually wanted some for Asian food on this shopping trip. After I walked past Taco Bell, the sample peep from Little Tokyo jumped in front of me trying to cut me off as I had my sights set on Hana Express, the next food stand. The aggressive sample peep was standing in the middle of foot traffic and hustling shoppers with greasy samples of chicken to order from Little Tokyo. The food there is really subpar greasy Chinese food trying to be passed off as Japanese. Hana Express has the real Japanese food, so immediately crept over to Hana Express for lunch.
I ordered the Hibachi Chicken Meal ($ 5.90 plus tax) served with vegetable fried rice and vegetables. The food was cooked to order on the grill with margarine. The meal took about 5 minutes to be ready. The Hibachi Chicken meal was a modest portion of food which was pretty decent and had tender pieces of boneless grilled chicken with a mix of very firm grilled veggies (carrot, zucchini, onion, broccoli) and fried rice (peas, onions, egg). I liked the brown dipping sauce for the chicken, which was definitely needed to give the chicken some flavor. The chicken here was definitely better than the piece of very greasy chicken I tried from the sample peep.
(3.4 stars)