Minado Sushi

I can't decide whether I like "traditional" sushi or newly invented crazy sushi. On most days, the plain salmon nigiri or salmon + avocado maki suffice to make me happy.

Yesterday and over Thanksgiving break, my family and I went to Minado and they have very bizarre sushi varieties. It was quite interesting.

 The above include a fried piece of Spam sushi (the one with the nori wrapped vertically around a fried rod), an oddly-sweet kiwi sauce roll (neon green sauce), a slightly off scallop sushi, a fried chicken sushi (between the scallop and seaweed salad ones), and some others that I don't remember. I recall there being some bell peppers in some of the sushis, and one of them was avocado, salmon, and Washington apple. I initially couldn't figure out what the apple was, and guessed melon. Funny how when a cube of food is put out of context, it is difficult to pinpoint what it is. The Spam one was just bizarre and the kiwi sauce was bad (but my brother enjoyed it).

This was from Thanksgiving. One of the rolls  (the one with the leafy stuff) was the Texas roll and it had a chunk of cooked cow. I don't recall what the other rolls included. Their spicy mayo sucks. Too much mayo and not enough sriracha.

Overall, it was quite fun trying out all these bizarre and novel rolls.

Sei & Maine Avenue Fish Market - Washington DC

Yes, this happened an entire month ago, but I never got around to posting about it. This was  the second Memorial Day Weekend we've spent in D.C. (see the first time in 2010 here and here - I'd like to think that I've grown up more since then?).

In a nutshell, food-related events included:

1. US Botanic Garden!
2. Teaism - my first bento box!
3. Hirshhorn Museum - giant butter!
4. Sei - fancy sushi!
5. Maine Avenue fish market!
6. Hot dog from a "70s hot dog" food cart that was bad.
7. National Museum of American History Food Exhibition

Now, in extreme detail!

US Botanic Garden

I love botanical gardens. I love them more than zoos. More than museums. I revel in looking at oddly-shaped leaves and brightly coloured flowers. I saw an avocado tree in real life! A pineapple plant right in front of me! This was fantastic! Sure, plants aren't cute or cuddly but it's so exciting for me to see the species that end up feeding me. Look! Marshmallow plant, even though modern marshmallows don't contain it.

Teaism
SP and I went to Teasim for lunch. I've never had a bento box before so this was exciting! The restaurant is beautifully decorated. In the basement, a constant, relaxing flow of water supplied the granite(?) pool in which carp swam around. So, this probably isn't authentic Japanese cuisine but it was still a neat, well, "fusion".
SP got the make-your-own-handrolls box. Unfortunately, the salmon was smoked. The nori was really crispy though, and I taught SP how to make the cone-shaped maki. The cabbage was pretty good, and I loved the mayonnaise.

I got the cooked salmon bento box. The cucumber was good but not as sour or spicy as usual pickled cucumber (though I typically eat Chinese pickled cucumber). The spinach was kind of astringent. I liked the salmon but I wish it were raw :(

Hirshhorn Museum of Art
Giant butter! I would love to have this as a bench or bed. My entire house in the future will have food-shaped furniture.

Sei Restaurant
For dinner, my family (minus my dad) and I walked around for a good hour before deciding on sushi at this nondescript sushi place halfway between Chinatown and Independence Mall. However, we then decided that we wanted to go to Chinatown to eat. While we were walking around Chinatown looking at menus, debating the authenticity of whatever the restaurants offered, my sister complained about having to walk so much. At some point, she exclaimed that we should just go for sushi. A guy walking past us stopped and advised "You know, if you really want good sushi, you should go to Sei."

Welp. After some walking and much confusion ("The map says it's right there!" "I don't see it. I just see the Spanish place." "It should be right there near the corner..." "..." "Oh! It's hidden!"), there we were, shuffling down some steps into the reception area of Sei, where they have posh business cards. From the outside, all you see is a small patch of white translucent glass with the word "SEI" written in thin letters.

We were seated at a white square table in the middle of the frustratingly dimly lit dining area. We sat on plush white chairs with no armrests ("modern", I guess). There was a candle at the table. I felt like I was in a lounge/club/bar type place. Young professionals were hanging around at the other tables, though I think there was one table with little kids. This place was possibly too classy for me.

They had interesting types of rolls. We ended up trying the fish and chips roll, a salmon roll with strawberry, a typical eel and avocado roll, and another one that escapes my mind (but possibly had scallops?). My sister only eats salmon nigiri or sashimi, so that's what she got. However, she was distraught with the fact that they had already put wasabi on the rice, under the salmon.

I enjoyed the salmon roll with strawberry. It was unexpected. As this occurred over a month ago, I've shamefully forgotten most of the details. The fish and chips roll wasn't greasy at all, so it wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the food and experience!




Maine Avenue Fish Market!



The next day, SP and I were walking towards the paddle boat area, when he remembered that there is a fish market in DC. As I love visiting different regions' markets/grocery stores, we decided to check it out. Apparently, in the past, the fishmongers would sell the fish at the port. However, there was some rule that made it illegal to sell fish on the port. So instead, the seafood is now sold directly from the boats that are anchored to the port. Technically, they aren't "on" on the port. I lamented the fact that I was unable to buy fish to bring home (because it'd have to sit in my bag or the back of the car for 2 entire days). However, we did have some delicious oysters (2nd time in my life?) and shrimp. They have both ready-made and fresh seafood.
The oysters were dislodged ("shucked" is the word, I suppose) right after we ordered them. They were very tasty.

We took the shrimp to the park/pathway near the paddle boats to eat. It was a really sunny day although it was a bit breezy, which gave a mild chill. Also, I like cocktail sauce.

National American History Musem - Food Exhibit
We got a pretty bad hot dog at a food cart on Independence Mall. It was supposed to be a "Mexican hot dog", with cheese and guacamole. We were given a hot dog with Cheez Whiz and diced unripe avocado (or maybe it wasn't even avocado. No avocado flavour). That was a letdown.
However, the Food Exhibit was alright. I wish they had more original documents rather than printouts of posters, though.

 I think this would be funny to sell nowadays.

I really liked this one, even though I haven't had a Frito in about 4 years.

 A pringle container!

I have never seen this for sale before, so that was cool.

Who knew there were so many shapes?

I forgot why the pins say this.

 Taco maker.

Sushi!

We bought a pound of sushi-grade salmon from Wholefoods because I don't think there are other places to get sushi-grade salmon in the suburbs. It was $20, which is ok, I suppose. It's something like $14 in Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia.
I used a bread knife to cut the salmon and I ended up making a bunch of nigiri and some salmon and cucumber maki. The  maki near the top of the plate are the ones with too much rice (where I covered the entire nori with rice), while the ones near the bottom are made with a thin layer of rice on only 2/3 of the nori. Also, it was surprisingly more difficult than I expected to cut the maki to the same height.

In the background, you can see my sister's cheese and cucumber sushi. She only eats salmon in sashimi form.

Bastille Day & Dasiwa

Today was wonderful! It's Bastille Day, so the Eastern State Penitentiary had a revolution-themed performance. I suppose the actors were running late, so they had the guillotining occur first (before the storming of the Bastille). This included the beheading of 5 watermelons. I wanted a chunk, but I was too far in the crowd to get one. The crowd's enthusiasm died down after about the 3rd melon, though.

After a bit of improv by the crew, Edith Piaf (acted by a male, part of the Bearded Ladies Cabaret) finally appeared in heels, a dress, and drawn on eyebrows! The songs were mashed up pop/rock songs, with a melange of French (spoken well!) and English, dipped with political humour. They even mentioned "cheese-eating surrender monkeys", which is a term from The Simpsons! I wonder how many others knew the reference. The show was fantastic, with a climax focusing on the lack of bread (preceded by an original song about bread, with a giant baguette who got shot), culminating in the release of over a thousand TastyKakes (Butterscotch Krimpets) from the roof of the Eastern State Penitentiary.

Unfortunately, SP and I were standing too far away to catch any. Later on, someone threw a Krimpet and it hit me with full force on my nose. For a lump of oils and sugars, that surprisingly hurt! I'm also surprised that they expire within a month.

Edith ended the show with "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien", a song I immediately associate with Edith Piaf. As people were leaving, I looked for more Tastykakes, but there were none! However, I saw a bunch of little kids with piles of them, and it probably gives them more happiness than it gives me (my time for collecting mounds of prepackaged cake treats have ended, I suppose). Besides, SP and I were going to eat a splendid sushi dinner at Dasiwa (honestly, IGNORE the reviews from before 2012...they are seriously out of date)!

Dasiwa was neat! It is half cafe, half sushi place. As I'm not really a fan of cafes, I anticipate just coming here for sushi in the future.

In aspects that seem to be big deals for others, but aren't important for me:

1. Appropriately decorated: Beautiful art on the walls, cute bathroom walls and ceilings (fish paintings), and stylish plates.

2. Great service: The waitress was really helpful and showed us what yellowtail and flounder look like. One of the other guys also had a sense of humour. First, as I was about to take a picture of the food, he joked "$5 extra for a picture!", and as we were finishing up, he told us (quoting SP because I was too busy staring at SP's beautiful face) "I've never seen a young couple with such an eye for delicacies! You know how to eat!".

3. Plating: Nicely done. I got a hibiscus flower that smells like ham.

So now, the stuff that does matter for me: foooooooooooooooood taste! So, I guess I do eat fish and possibly other animals now. We first got the salmon maki (roll), the tuna roll, and the octopus sashimi. We were pleasantly surprised to find that there was avocado and cucumber in the rolls too!   The sushi was delicious, but I'm not a sushi connoisseur, so I generally appreciate anything rolled up in vinegar sushi rice and nori. SP, however, has more sushi experience than me, and he thought that it was "great!". 

We got 4 pieces of octopus sashimi, even though the menu said that we'd get 3 - perhaps they just sliced the same weight of octopus more thinly so that we'd have an even number of slices to share. One of the pieces looked super squiggly! Octopus is really chewy and a bit tough. I think I prefer squid over it.

Then, we got the yellowtail roll and some squid nigiri. Yellowtail flesh is differently coloured, so our sushi was quite pretty (although this time, there wasn't any avocado). The squid looked like a slice of onion, but it tasted way better! I am quite pleased with myself, because I managed to nibble on more wasabi (or dyed horseradish; I'm not really sure) than I've ever had my whole life (minus the wasabi peas). I'm actually starting to like it!

Before we left, the chef gave us each a spoonful of scallop with melted butter, roe, scallions, and ponzu sauce (with citrus). I didn't catch everything the waitress said, but it looked fancy. I envision myself eating this kind of thing when I'm a millionaire a few decades from now. Or not; I'll probably still be munching on comforting peanut butter sandwiches while working 12-hour days at the lab. It tasted a bit foreign to me: buttery, sour/vinegary, fatty/oily, and orangy. Interesting mix of flavors and tastes.

As we walked back home, we swung by Wholefoods. I was disappointed that the almond flour was $13.99/lb, but we were both satisfied with dessert - some tea cookies from the choose-it-yourself place. I tried the lemon and rosemary biscuit, which was interesting, and the vegan gingerbread with raspberry filling, which was extremely moist and delicious. SP got a cream filled double chocolate chip cookie sandwich (good), a cookie sandwich with ganache (good), and a swirly hard cookie with a dot of jam (dry and bland).

Tokyo Hibachi Asian Cuisine & Sushi!!

Today was spiffin'! I hung out with friends and I didn't stress out about anything (I will, later, though, while I lie in bed worrying about the past/future). We went to Secaucus and had sushi!!!

It was scrumptiously delicious and there was a lot of avocado sushi!! My favourite! I picked off the crab/shrimp from the sushi. I guess my brother would've been psyched to eat salmon sushi. I would be too if I still ate salmon (I'm still questioning why I don't, actually). So the Philadelphia roll (north east of image below) has cream cheese... I think, except that it was more savoury.

Also, I ate the fish egg sushi. As a not-really-strict-anymore vegetarian, where do I draw the line? I eat chicken eggs. Is it incorrect for me to eat fish eggs, then? Hm. As a joke, "genocide" was mentioned. Hehehe.

The online reviews seem to be more negative than positive. Obviously, people have too high standards (or, I just have too low standards?), because Tokyo Sushi people aren't rude, there is a huge (yes. huge.) selection of sushi, raw sea critters, dumplings, dim sum, and even mozzarella and tomatoes, and the environment was nice (bamboo frosting on the windows, live fish in the indoor waterfall/pool). Dude... if a vegetarian can find a niche here, why can't other food snobs? (Was that question out of line? Eh, doesn't matter.)

And all that lunch for the price of one meal at a college dining hall ($10, plus tax/tip=$13).
... and another thing: it was bright. I could actually see the people at the other tables. I wasn't in a dimly-lit room. THERE WERE SKYLIGHTS. Definitely a plus for photo taking and for admiring food.
Super-gelatine-ful mango pudding and orange cake and peanut mochi! They had tinned longans.

So, this is maybe my second favourite restaurant (owing to both the restaurant and to the experience I had today with friends), after Govinda's.

Tokyo Hibachi Asian Cuisine & Sushi Buffet

700 Plaza Dr. Secaucus NJ 07094

Campus Food...What? Be a Scavenger...

A few weeks ago, there was this terribly organised event called "CampusFood Free for All". The theory was that there would be tons of restaurant food from catering services affiliated with CampusFood, and all this food would go to us frosh, along with nice glass mugs.

This failed in many many many aspects.

1. Squishing 1000s of people, including not frosh, into a small room (fire hazard=more than 200 people) evidently doesn't make sense.

2. Having people stand in line outside this room doesn't work, especially since nearly everyone cuts lines. This really irked me...but I suppose I should've expected it; after all, humans are greedy, jealous, and selfish. It's human nature. So, it was basically a blob of a line, and MA, who arrived maybe half an hour after me and TJ somehow ended up getting a mug an hour before we did.

3. Insomnia Cookies is on the floor below the room. Somehow, they only provided us with 3 boxes of cookies, which ended up going to people standing behind us.

4. Cream and Sugar didn't turn up.

5. Oh, you know what DID turn up? Pizza and sammiches. But it's not a Frosh Free for All! No no no, it's take-half-a-slice-of-pizza and a-small-chunk-of-a-cured-pig-flesh-sammich and don't-take-more! For some reason, they didn't expect this many frosh to turn up [hello? 2,500 frosh!! + all the other undergrads and grads...]

So it was a terrible waste of an hour although I did get a mug out of it. So then TJ and I went to Hill for actual dinner [At the "Free For All", we saw the first few people walking out with 3+ slices of pizza. We ended up each getting half a slice of pizza. So...]

At Hill, there was sushi! Although the rice tasted correctly seasoned with the vinegar, the rice was either overcooked [congee-texture], or undercooked [hard]. It was a nice change, although the server only gave everyone two pieces :(

There was also a cupcake with icky pink icing, no doubt because they want to use up all the leftover red food colouring from Commercialization Day. I've never seen Hill with cupcakes before, but I have to say that the cupcakes are bland, dry, and boring. Actually, I don't really think I tremendously like the baked goods at Penn Dining because the cookies are always hard and never moist/soft, and the cakes are as I have described. The pies are generally fantastic though and the mini doughnuts are quite nice because they have this flavour that reminds me of doughnuts that I used to eat in Australia and HK.

Pod

I had lunch at Pod today, with 6 people from the lab at the Monell Center for Chemical Senses where I'm volunteering, and Stephanie Lucianovic. Stephanie is a food writer [which made this lunch even more amazing!, which is certainly intriguing since I've never met a professional writer/blogger at lunch before! She also likes Alton Brown, so that's cool.

I've walked past this restaurant a lot with TJ when we go to Kings Court for dinner, and from the outside, it looked pretty amazing; everything was red and the furniture was interesting.

I walked in today and remarked that...

Firstly, it looked swanky. There is no other word to describe it - it was swanky [but then again, I don't know much about upscale-ish restaurants, except Chinese ones]. They had matches next to the door, in little pieces of card. I'm not sure why, since I'm sure they don't want the place burned down. In close proximity was a wine bar. It was all rather red and pretty.

Note the buttons that look like chocolate candies; they were about the size of a hand, and once pressed, made the lighting in the booth change colour. There were only two booths with these lights; the rest of the restaurant was nicely laid out as shown below:

Note the conveyor belt sushi! That reminded me of Genki Sushi in Hong Kong, which I sorely miss right now.

There were booths by the window which were pretty cool too. I blurred out the faces of people.

Since we had lunch under green lighting [until dessert], my photos look green. At the time, my eyes had adjusted to the green lighting, so I wasn't aware of the fact that my sushi looked... green. I don't think that green makes food that photogenic; the best lighting is evidently white light from the sun. Then, I suppose it's the yellow that I'm used to from incandescent light bulbs. Green light... well, I suppose it adds to the mood, right? Neutral, relaxing?

I got the TnT sushi roll, which was eight pieces of vegetarian sushi.

Vegetarian sushi that surprising looked and tasted un-vegetarian.

1. It looks like there are raw tuna slices on the top, but it actually is slivered tomato. It's the part of the tomato that's between the skin and the seeds. I'm wondering what the did with the other 90% of the tomato... because each ovule takes up a LOT of the tomato [the seed, the liquidy part, and the segments between them], and what I had here was merely the outer part of the tomato...

2. The chopped garnish at the top, which reminds me of walnuts, is actually a jalapeno cucumber salsa. It was a bit spicier than the ginger on the side, which, unlike the ones I'm used to seeing, were cream coloured rather than salmon-coloured. I suppose they didn't add the FD&C Red, which is good to know. However, I still didn't like the taste of pickled ginger. Maybe I will one day.

[So, I used flash a lot because the lighting was rather dim. To compensate, my photos now make the rice look like it lacks detail.]

3. The filling tasted fishy. Perhaps I am confusing umami with fishy. There was tamago, which I learned was the Japanese-style egg that I used to eat a lot in Hong Kong. Some of the tamago was crispy, which gave off that Japanese-style-eel flavour. There was also carrot, cucumber, and avocado. I truly think that the avocado makes any sushi taste fishy. I'm not sure why; perhaps the soy sauce enhances it, although soy-sauce-free avocado sushi tastes just as fishy. It could be the texture; the smooth, fatty, melt-in-your-mouth feeling reminds me of raw salmon. So, yes, avocado definitely makes sushi taste fishy.

A dissection of the filling. I suppose I was being kind of inappropriate at the lunch table since everyone else was eating their food, and there I was, prying it open with a scalpel - I mean, with a fork. After my third piece of sushi, I decided to use the chopsticks, because I realised that using a fork to eat sushi [my first time, I daresay] was a bit clumsy. So, you can see the vegetables.

4. I'm not sure what the yellow-orangey mixture, which looks like fish roe, is. It tasted like fish. It definitely was not carrot or tomato. I'll have to ask next time. It tasted nice and savoury though.

5. This is a really bad picture, but if you look closely, you can see that I've taken apart some of the rice in the front, leaving only a thin, white membrane. I could not tell what this membrane was. I tried to eat some by itself, and I noticed a hint of soy. I think that this is the soy wrapper thing that my mum cooks all the time - I'm not sure what the English name is, but it's used a lot in stir-fries with wood ear. Next time I make sushi, I will definitely incorporate some soy wrappers!

Another image of the membrane.

I tried some hibiscus tea, which arrived in a cute little teapot, which appears green under the lighting. I've tried hibiscus bubble tea before, which was tons sweeter than this, but this tea gave off such a nice aroma!! I've never seen or smelled a live hibiscus flower before, and now I'd really like to.

A close up of the stuff in the tea, which turned out pink or purple...I couldn't tell in the lighting; it almost looked light blue for a while.

Desserts! This was a Chocolate Bread Pudding, which in my opinion did not taste like bread pudding [well, I suppose if the bread was crumbled into 1mm pieces...]. It tasted like a chocolate brownie, but lacked the oily residue that commercial brownies possess. I'm not sure how the garnish thingy [A chocolate flake?] tasted.

Butterscotch Brown Sugar Cake, with panna cotta. Panna cotta is amazing! I'd never had it before, so it was new, and it did make a normal cake look pretty and taste interesting ["Butterscotch Brown Sugar Cake" is basically a sponge cake made with brown sugar...the name just makes it sound elite]. The gingersnaps were super delicious. I like ginger cookies, and these were super crunchy. They should make gingersnaps cereal. They really really should - not with reconstituted-corn-and-corn-syrup, but with actual gingersnaps. Hm... next time I buy gingersnaps, I guess I'm going to eat them crumbled up in milk, with a spoon and a bowl...

4 sorbets on a chunk of ice: pineapple, coconut, mint, and guava. One of them had a peppercorn in it, but I'm not sure whether it was the guava or the pineapple. The coconut ice sorbet had a nice refreshing taste to it, BUT THE MINT SORBET WAS... ... The mint sorbet reminded me of three or four winters ago, when I got snow, added milk and sugar to it, and added dried mint flakes. As in, the one from the shaker from the grocery store. It tasted like mint, not peppermint, and it tasted just like my snow ice cream. It just looked prettier. This was pretty surprising, because most people would expect the conventional mint-chocolate type sorbet... so this one wins at being "cool". Haha... cool mint...

But this means that I can make my snow ice cream and sell it for $2/scoop.

I lack plating and customers, though.

Oh, some pictures were taken after people had taken chunks out of the food; the desserts weren't served to us half-eaten. The servers were really nice.

One last remark: the fries that came with the hoagie were literally shoe-string fries. Sure, they were only 5cm long, but they were, maximally 2mm thick. It was an amazing sight. I should just order those next time.