Sorry about the stupid title, but couldn't think of anything else good to call this blog that was catchy so you will have to just bear with me and know that today I am going to talk sushi. One area of my pallet that is so lacking in flavor identification is Asian cuisine. I have such limited experience in this area but I try very hard to try new things all the time and I will certainly give you my honest point of view. I will tell you though, that I do love sushi (if anyone who knew me 10 years ago heard me say that they would have fallen over dead). With that being said, I want to share with you a place that I have gone to many times before, but because I have just decided to blog about my food experiences, is the first time I have written about them, and that place is Little Tokyo Restaurant in Bellingham, Washington.
I actually stumbled upon this place right after I first moved to Bellingham in October of 2000. I was looking for a really good teriyaki joint and this happened to be just up the street from my rented abode. Of course my first visit did not include sushi (even though I did notice that there was a sushi bar and it was on the menu), I just had the chicken teriyaki. It wasn't until my girlfriend (now my wife) was visiting me when she said she wanted some sushi and that was beginning (reluctant at first) of my journey into the world of sushi. But enough of memories of the past, lets jump into the present.
My wife and I walk into the restaurant and are greeted promptly -- not many places where you are not greeted promptly but it is always a good place to start. The restaurant decor is vanilla Japanese but, in their defense, it is in a community shopping center called Barkley Village (upscale strip mall) and therefore, there is not a whole lot you can do with the interior but they tried. Right inside the entrance is a bamboo screen followed by a small sushi bar where, if you want, you can watch the artist at work. But I will tell what really bugged me about the bar setup and that was amongst the display of fresh ingredients in the glass case, the set-out chopsticks and Japanese dinnerware, was, in plain view, a microwave on the back shelf of the prep area (tacky, tacky). Hide the microwave and they would have had a well set up prep area. After passing the bar, you step into the main dining area which is clean and orderly, however, (and this is what I love about this place), the first thing you notice is that there is no flatware on the table...just napkins and chopsticks! Of course, for those of you who want to eat with a fork you can certainly degrade yourself and ask for it and they will cheerfully bring it to you. Enough of the condescending attitude though...lets push forward.
We find our seats, get our sushi and regular menus and it is off to the dining races we go. I will say that it is not unusual that we just order sushi for dinner, but tonight, we both decided that we were going to order entrees as well. However, as always, we start with ordering the sushi. Tonight we order two of our favorites, Ruby Roll and a small California Roll. If you have not heard of ruby roll, it is because you can only find it at Little Tokyo...it is their own heavenly creation. This roll is stuffed with avocado and shrimp tempura (freshly cooked and still warm) and wrapped by perfectly textured and fresh sushi rice, but it gets better. Placed on each piece of the roll is fresh, sashimi tuna with a mountain of crispy fried yam straws. I'm not done yet, wait for it....wait for it....ya, thats right, the roll is sitting atop an absolute fantastic spicy sauce and to counterbalance that, a sweet sauce that is drizzled on top (I think they called it eel sauce but I do not remember exactly so don't take it as gospel). OMG!!!! You place a piece in your mouth and the flavor just explodes like a culinary firework of flavor and textures...the sweet, the spicy, the earthy, along with the crunch of the straws, the soft of the avocado and the slight chewiness of the sushi rice -- it is just food VALHALLA (if there were a Valhalla in Japan)! I will make mention that the California Roll was the standard avocado, crab and rice wrapped in nori, still, it was fresh and very good in its own right. You could certainly tell that plating was done with care and love, and the platter had the standard fare of wasabi paste and fresh shaved ginger, in other words, I was eating with my eyes long before I wrapped my chopsticks around those tasty morsels.
Because this really is all about the sushi, I am not going to write a whole lot about the entrees (I apologize for mentioning it in the above, but I do have a knack to sometimes go off on a verbal tangent...kind of like now!) but I will tell you that they have the standard Japanese fare of teriyaki, yakisoba, udon, tempura, miso soup, etc., etc., which are all incredibly tasty and fresh. Along with that you can quench your thirst with multiple choices of Japanese beers, saki or hot tea (I know, hot tea doesn't quench but if you want, you can order it iced too), and there is the standard American beverage selection (alcoholic and non) but why would you ruin such a cool Asian culinary experience with droll American grog? All of this culinary vacation is incredibly priced and will not leave your wallet feeling like it has been drained by a vampire. I highly recommend Little Tokyo in Bellingham, WA and hope that if your travels take you up north, that you stop and enjoy this little slice of Japanese nirvana (if Japan had a nirvana)!
Little Tokyo Restaurant
2915 Newmarket Pl # 101
Bellingham, WA 98226-3868
(360) 752-2222
P.S. Coming up next, our special birthday dining suprise...look forward to it!
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Sunday, June 28, 2009
LaFitte's...LaFailure
Well, here I go again, writing about my culinary adventures. The latest exploration is a visit my wife and I made to LaFitte's Restaurant located in the Doubletree Hotel - Denver North (Westminster, CO). LaFitte's touts that their menu is New Orleans inspired but I seriously doubt it -- I have not been to New Orleans but, if the food down in the Big Easy tastes like this, it will be the last place in this life or any life for that matter, that I will visit to eat. When one first looks at the menu, there is a little tingle of excitement as there are items like jambalya with chicken and sausage, or cajun crab cakes and other New Orleans inspired cuisine on the front page. Then you look inside the menu and there nothing there but standard fare sandwiches and burgers...what a huge disappointment. One has to go to the back of the menu to view a token list of Big Easy dishes.
Still, I am a bit excited as I want my tongue to take that culinary adventure to the Mississippi Delta (even if I am in Denver, CO). First, we order the crab and sweet corn bisque for us to share as an appetizer. This was probably the best dish of the evening as the crab and corn were wonderfully sweet and flavorful in a rich cream bisque but the dish was very underseasoned (a little bit of salt and fresh cracked black pepper would have gone a long way). From here, the adventure descended in to the depths of culinary hell. I ordered the crawfish etoufee and my wife ordered the St. Charles (lite) pasta with shrimp. The presentation of my dish was outstanding and showed incredible potential as it was a whole cooked, bright red crawfish sitting on a island of white rice surrounded by a pond of dark roux with colorful herbs sprinkled around the edge of the bowl. That is the only good thing I can say about it, as the rice was bland and the roux was completely flavorless (ever eaten paper mache paste?). I had hoped for bits of mud bug in my roux but, it didn't even have the taste of crawfish (as promised in the menu) in the darkened sauce much less any of the delectable crustacean...how incredibly disappointing. My wife's dish was very underseasoned and swimming in a lake of olive oil which was very unappetizing to look at. However, her shrimp were perfectly cooked and well seasoned so we know that someone in that kitchen knew how to cook and use seasoning (or did they call for takeout shrimp from Joe's Crab Shack just up the street?). In the end, I found myself wishing that I had ordered a deluxe cheeseburger with fries instead of what should have been their signature taste.
I will say that the service was good and all the staff that we came in contact with were friendly but that is not why we came to the restaurant was it -- we were looking for a tasty venture and ended up with a culinary disaster that would have probably qualified for FEMA assistance. Of all things, breakfast that morning was good, hearty and enjoyable but with a name like LaFitte's their dinner fare should have been the shining star. I do not recommend eating at LaFitte's.
Still, I am a bit excited as I want my tongue to take that culinary adventure to the Mississippi Delta (even if I am in Denver, CO). First, we order the crab and sweet corn bisque for us to share as an appetizer. This was probably the best dish of the evening as the crab and corn were wonderfully sweet and flavorful in a rich cream bisque but the dish was very underseasoned (a little bit of salt and fresh cracked black pepper would have gone a long way). From here, the adventure descended in to the depths of culinary hell. I ordered the crawfish etoufee and my wife ordered the St. Charles (lite) pasta with shrimp. The presentation of my dish was outstanding and showed incredible potential as it was a whole cooked, bright red crawfish sitting on a island of white rice surrounded by a pond of dark roux with colorful herbs sprinkled around the edge of the bowl. That is the only good thing I can say about it, as the rice was bland and the roux was completely flavorless (ever eaten paper mache paste?). I had hoped for bits of mud bug in my roux but, it didn't even have the taste of crawfish (as promised in the menu) in the darkened sauce much less any of the delectable crustacean...how incredibly disappointing. My wife's dish was very underseasoned and swimming in a lake of olive oil which was very unappetizing to look at. However, her shrimp were perfectly cooked and well seasoned so we know that someone in that kitchen knew how to cook and use seasoning (or did they call for takeout shrimp from Joe's Crab Shack just up the street?). In the end, I found myself wishing that I had ordered a deluxe cheeseburger with fries instead of what should have been their signature taste.
I will say that the service was good and all the staff that we came in contact with were friendly but that is not why we came to the restaurant was it -- we were looking for a tasty venture and ended up with a culinary disaster that would have probably qualified for FEMA assistance. Of all things, breakfast that morning was good, hearty and enjoyable but with a name like LaFitte's their dinner fare should have been the shining star. I do not recommend eating at LaFitte's.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Big Mama's, Big Eats
I do love BBQ and especially midwestern BBQ. With that being said, I have not had a ton of exposure as I live in the Pacific Northwest and only visit the midwest (St. Louis, MO Metro area) occasionally. My last trip was just made a week ago when I was visiting my daughter in Belleville, IL and we decided to re-visit a mom and pop style BBQ restaurant called Big Mama's Barbeque located at corner of W. Main Street and N. Belt West. Upon entering we found a very clean homey dining room with tables that had hundreds, if not thousands of business cards under a plexi-glass cover (of course I had to leave mine). But, the dining room was not the reason I came, it was the BBQ!
We sat down and immediately received a warm and friendly greeting from the waitress. While we were perousing the menu, the aroma of BBQ and smoke lightly scented the dining room which of course made us even more hungry. My daughter and I both decided on the pulled pork sandwich with sides of buffalo fries and cornbread muffins and sweet tea to drink. We didn't have to wait long and our meal adventure was presented to us and we quickly dived in. The sandwich was delightful with a light smokey/sweet flavor (not overly sweet) and the meat absolutely fall apart tender. The bun was incredibly fresh and soft but did not take away from the pork, instead it was supporting act that truly brought the taste of the sandwich to the forefrunt. The sides were also very good and played a supporting role to the sandwich -- the buffalo fries were fresh, crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside with a moderate spicey buffalo flavor, and the cornbread muffins were light, warm and mildly sweet, served with a maple butter which was delightful. The only complaint that I have is that the sweet tea was so syrupy sweet that it was difficult to drink (I actually had to ask to have it mixed with unsweetened tea to make it palatable). I certainly wished I had a bigger stomach as there was so much more on the menu I wanted to try. I will be back!
Other items on the menu included beef brisket, half a chicken, crispy pork snoots (which I intend to try on my next trip) and a 2+ pound pork steak...can you say pig heaven? If you happen to be in the Belleville, IL area, take the time to go to Big Mama's...you won't be disappointed!
Big Mama's Barbeque
5110 N. Belt West
Belleville, IL 62226
(618) 239-0695
We sat down and immediately received a warm and friendly greeting from the waitress. While we were perousing the menu, the aroma of BBQ and smoke lightly scented the dining room which of course made us even more hungry. My daughter and I both decided on the pulled pork sandwich with sides of buffalo fries and cornbread muffins and sweet tea to drink. We didn't have to wait long and our meal adventure was presented to us and we quickly dived in. The sandwich was delightful with a light smokey/sweet flavor (not overly sweet) and the meat absolutely fall apart tender. The bun was incredibly fresh and soft but did not take away from the pork, instead it was supporting act that truly brought the taste of the sandwich to the forefrunt. The sides were also very good and played a supporting role to the sandwich -- the buffalo fries were fresh, crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside with a moderate spicey buffalo flavor, and the cornbread muffins were light, warm and mildly sweet, served with a maple butter which was delightful. The only complaint that I have is that the sweet tea was so syrupy sweet that it was difficult to drink (I actually had to ask to have it mixed with unsweetened tea to make it palatable). I certainly wished I had a bigger stomach as there was so much more on the menu I wanted to try. I will be back!
Other items on the menu included beef brisket, half a chicken, crispy pork snoots (which I intend to try on my next trip) and a 2+ pound pork steak...can you say pig heaven? If you happen to be in the Belleville, IL area, take the time to go to Big Mama's...you won't be disappointed!
Big Mama's Barbeque
5110 N. Belt West
Belleville, IL 62226
(618) 239-0695
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