My blog has quickly become a food blog once again…

Today I went to my favorite Japanese lunch place, Kaita. Kaita regularly has special menu, which includes much of traditional Japanese home cooking along regular sushi and other stuff. Whenever I come here, I almost always get those special menus, but today was cold enough that this soba looked too good. Many people were ordering them.

^ Kaita soba, combination of tempura, tanuki, and sansai (mountain vegetable) soba. The portion was quite big and I was full until a lot later. The group sat next to us saw our Kaita soba and they were ordering the same, too.

For dinner, we went to a new restaurant called Hong Kong Restaurant Chinese Food. With such a weird naming and being adjacent to a run down inn, we’ve never tried eating here even though we always pass by here. To our surprise, food was pretty descent. Some said it was more like family style food. We had eight people and ordered eight dishes, and finished them all!

When we asked for no-MSG, the waiter kind of had shifty eyes, but I think we got our food MSG-less… … I think. (Why am I kinda thirsty now?) They also gave us free soup and dessert, which means I’m missing one dish in the picture, for crispy garlic chicken… That one was good, too.

Oh yeah we had two same-looking dish because someone loved the name too much: “Hokkien Tofu” and “Hokkien Fried Rice.”

We went to Tanto today for dinner. Haven’t been here a while, but it was still good restaurant, especially if we had a bit more people than just my hubby and me. We ordered a bunch of semi-unusual dishes today.

^ Beef tongue. French kissing with cows, is what hubby said =__=;

^ “Tanto’s signature dish,” says hubby. It is really good. Probably the best yaki onigiri (grilled rice ball) that I had, ever.

^ Buta Mentai (pork cod roe). The sauce was excellent when dipping yaki onigiri in it. I want to try cooking this on my own.

^ Sanma (pacific saury) with Japanese plum. I think in the middle was yamaimo (mountain yam). I don’t know about other people, but liked it a lot Sanma mmm plum mmm :9

^ Tai (red snapper? sea bream?), ikura, shrimp in mizore (grated daikon) sauce. Really wanted to have rice to go with this dish, but too bad we ate all the onigiri already. We ordered extra rice dish, though by that time we finished eating this one…

^ Tai Yakimeshi (red snapper on rice in stone bowl. The (cute) waitress will mix this for you right in front of you, and put them to individual bowl for you v

^ You can eat it as is, or with dashi soup. I usually have it by itself for the first bowl, and with dashi soup for the second bowl.

By the time we finished eating, I was soooo full! It was such a enjoyable night with great company, great food, and laughter-filled conversation