kiyomi m.'s Profile

Whadda ya expect from an Indian Buffett?  Though I must say I do prefer Sneha...

I wonder if the owners cringed when Bombay renamed itself to Mumbai...

A word to the wise...  Ajiten is definitely NOT the place to get sushi.  As a matter of fact, you would never get sushi in Japan in a place like this.  But as we all have observed, for Japanese restaurant to survive in the US, they must have sushi.

Stick with their teishoku and donburi...  you know, the working man's food.

Dive bar that's, well, not really a dive bar.  Gotta love it.

Great home style feel.  I'm not familiar with Turkish food, but what I had there was excellent.  Cornish hen, tea, some nutty sticky cookie.  My co worker knows the family there, so the service was ok, but I could see Mae S's point; if there was a big pickup order (feeding the visting Turkish Yagli Gures team, for instance) they would be paralized...

I know, it's an outrage...  2 stars for what is one of the most celebrated Japanese restaurants in the world.  I have to preface this with the following; it's 2 stars if you want Japanese food.  It's 5 stars if you want Japerican.  It started with Benihana, a Japanese American chef trained in the west marketing a hybrid cuisine under the guise of "Japanese food".  Nobu obviously is in another universe compared to Benihana, but the idea is essentially the same.  Take Japanese cuisine, spin some western touch, and voilla!  Another overpriced franchise hit!!  

"South American & western influenced Japanese cuisine which has been branded distinctly as "Nobu Food".  It's right there in the web page.  

So, my experience with Nobu started with one of these wallstreet types swearing up and down that it's the best Japanese food I'll ever have.  Mind you, he's never been to Japan, but that's besides the point... We sit in a table located in the middle of a large room full of money.  Then wall street insists that I order for all of us, since I'm from Japan.   I open the menu, get confused with all the "South American and Western influence."   And decide to take the Denny's approach...  Order what looks good in the pictures.  Of course, I did what I always do when I go to any place claiming to have excellent sushi.  Omakase.  What's fresh today.  We also ordered up some cool fusion dishes, which was awesome, but not Japanese.  They did have excellent Sake selection, which is why they get the second star.

When we received the sushi order, I was plainly unimpressed with the selection the chef provided (an understudy behind the bar?  who knows...).  Of course, I knew I was in deep kaka when wallstreet said "no spicy tuna? that blows!"

Sake was served in a chilled bamboo shoot, which was a nice touch.  May be I need to give another star for that, but hey, that's just marketing...

Moral of this story:  My expectation was incorrectly set when wallstreet told me that it would be the best Japanese food I'll ever eat.  If I knew I was walking into one of these fusion places, I would have ordered the spicy caliphillydragonyder roll, ordered up some nice salad (since Japanese are a bit weak on the salad department), and enjoyed my Deniro's favorite Black Cod with Miso, while looking for some celeberty types to stroll in.  And for the price of the evening, I could have just flown to Osaka and had some serious Okonomi Yaki, or proper sushi for that matter.

May be when I'm so stinkin rich that I can spend that kind of money on "dining experience" I'll go back.  But for now, I'm having my sushi from a small counter in a fish market, in a land far far away...

BU stands for...

Big and Ugly.

Deal with it!  Martin Luther King did!  Do you think your name will be remembered like Dr. K?  Moral of the story?  BU is a city block, where you take the "T" to class.  No fancy campus.  Go and make the best of it for yourself.  And yes, move out of the dorms as soon as possible.  I did, and am a well adjusted, upstanding citizen for doing it....

Love.  Read Jitterbug Perfume and know that the hot bath and nice smells keep you immortal.  Scientific validitiy aside, I like the idea that bathing is good for your soul, or at least hygene (yes, the continental Europeans, I'm talking to you!).   Having lived in a land plentiful of hot baths, it's an excruciating lifestyle compromise to settle for one of these pathetic excuse for a "tub" in the US.  When my hot wife (who's actually much colder in temperature) and I finally cracked under utter dissapointment from the world's leading Economy's inability to provide it's population a bath with depth no deeper than 6 inches, Watercourse Way came to the rescue.  

It was our anniversary, and thank God this place existed, for I am the classic knucklehead who has little imagination and less organization to plan a romantic anything, let alone a marriage saving afternoon.  Of course, my wife actually found it, reserved it, and told me which way to drive to it, but it was my name that was on the credit card...  Yes, my wife is at the same time a babe and a saint....  

We had a 3 hour deal, with private bath and massage with steam room.  Massage is ok.  I'm used to shiatsu or a 100lb massuse tapdancing on my back, but my wife, the finer of the vessel, enjoyed the massage tremendously, and intern, I enjoyed the massage that she enjoyed so much...  Ok, that's the end of that.  

Go there, bring your better half, be immortal.

Rock and Roll Sushi... Need I say more?

Anyohaseyo!  That's right people, Koreans can make good Japanese food!  Actually, I must say that the spicy tuna roll (another Japerican creation) is got the signature Tae Kwon Do kick in the arse in the spicy category, something my kin are unlikely to reproduce.  Lets face it, when it comes to in your face flavor, a la garlic spice till it hurts the next day coming out the other end, Koreans are hard to beat.  Let them make Japanese food, and inevitably you get the "good God please spare my sphincter..." factor imbedded to what is commonly a subtle fare of dashi hidden in shoyu flavor or whatever variant of soy by-product.  

All that aside (that is, can Korean make authentic Japanese?  The answer is of course yes, but then, why would they when they can add their own spin!), the quality of fish was definitely top notch, and it is now becoming our (my hot wife, that is...) favorite lunch date.  

And bonus points for having a Kansai okusan working the tables.  Not only is she easy on the eyes, but she's all about  the Korean man.  Gotta keep the gene pool mixed!!  We all know what happens when there is too much inbreeding... (my 2 cents on anti racism through cross breeding.  If I was appointed GOD, or an evid dictator, I would require all marriages to be interracial...)

Metcha umai!!! the absolute BEST noodle shop, if you speak Japanese.  You'll get crap service if you walk in and ask for californa roll, and may spit in your food, diarrhea boy.   Go there, and know what you you want.  Go to Bennigans if you want smiley friendly chatty waitress.  Go here if you want the taste of authentic kote kote miso ramen.