Dinners, Mostly Sans Photos

We've had a few worthwhile restaurant visits recently. Friday we had dinner at Jennifer James 101, where I had a wonderful steak, perfectly rare, topped with a ginger-port sauce and served with asparagus and shitake mushrooms. Dave had their vegetarian dish, lentil and basmati-stuffed chard in tomato sauce with almonds and burnt onions (that's how the menu describes them) on top. I passed on dessert as they were out of the chocolate flan, but Dave had a chocolate-pecan tart with ice cream. I had a seriously terrific cup of coffee. (I don't know how they do what they do with coffee, but when it can stand its ground against such wonderful food, it's pretty darn good.)

Last night, we had dinner with Rudy at Kokoro, our favorite little homestyle Japanese restaurant. Rudy is systematically working his way through the menu there and had oyako-donburi ("parent and child" rice bowl, which is chicken and egg with onion cooked in dashi, mirin, soy sauce, and sugar and served over rice with beni-shoga, salt-pickled ginger). Dave had the tamago-donburi (which is the same dish without the chicken). I ordered natto soba, fermented soybeans over cold soba topped with seaweed and green onion. In case I didn't like the broth (I don't like too fishy soups), I also ordered a small oyako-donburi. (Of course I ended up eating both.)

In addition to our main dishes, we also had sushi appetizers (vegetable maki, tempura shrimp roll, and inari) and Dave had egg rolls.

So, yes, we waddled out there, stuffed.

So it was kind of funny when the young man (the son of the Japanese woman and American man who own the place) ran out after us to give us three of these:



Koriyama Cheese Cake. (There are four in the picture because Dave bought one to bring home.)

It's funny, but both times I've ordered natto at this restaurant, the woman who owns the place has given us a little treat like this. (The last time it was a box of almond Pocky.)

What else has been going on around here besides eating?

Hmmm. Well, Dave's mother paid him a visit two weekends ago. I didn't mention it because I didn't, by design, see her. She and Dave had several meals together and saw a play and went to the museum. I went to the studio and stayed out of the way.

And speaking of the studio, there was a little bit of manufactured drama there of which I was the object. I didn't write about that either because I was very, very angry about the whole thing at the time, but now that it's blown over, the whole thing seems rather silly. Such is the nature of manufactured drama, I suppose.

There are new banks to be seen, but I didn't get pictures today. (And if you're reading, Heather, your bank is on the way. I just put off posting it a week or so beyond when I said I would partly because of some weird thing I have about post offices and partly because when it comes to procrastination, I am the reigning world champion. Sorry 'bout that!)