08. 31. DINNER

conveyor belt sushi

Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul, et cetera. I would have thrown a fit if we left without having gone here at least once, so I dragged my brother out randomly for dinner just so that I could satisfy my raging gluttony. It’s about ten minutes from our house, Sushihiroba, and god I love it to pieces. Everything’s always so bright and fresh and they’re really nice there and usually there’s room and it’s just so great. We didn’t get the best seat for this meal, it was at the bar the furthest from the door, but then again we couldn’t have been sitting at a table and it wasn’t like we were getting less of anything. I would have taken pictures of every single dish but that would have impeded my eating greatly and also looked pretty abysmally silly. But we had a bunch of awesome things, snapper (again, bream?), some semi-awesome part of red tuna, mackerel, a lot of other stuff that looked and tasted amazing but the names of which were unknown to us. We racked up quite a bill.

전어초밥: hickory shad sushi

And lo and behold, for here is the hickory shad, reigning champion of my recent dreams. When I was raving about them I had in mind the sashimi, complete with crunchy bone, but actually this way might be superior. For one thing there’s a lot more of the fish you’re eating in one bite, since the sashimi has to be sliced thin enough for the bones to be edible, and also that’s more of the skin, which is terrifyingly good. This was fantastic. I saw on the menu that they had the hickory shads in special since they were in season, so I decided to order a plate. We had one each, and even my brother agreed that we should go against custom and order another two. I’ve never had fish quite this fresh, it was definitely different from — and much better than — well, pretty much everything else out there. I can’t really say much about it except that you’ll know instinctively what I mean by fresh. Just the right amount of chewy, the still-wet feeling of that skin, and seriously the flavor is insane. You can get, what, five kinds of fish in the Princeton area? Tuna, salmon, yellowtail, mackerel and flounder? Psh. This is where it’s at. Seasonal fish. Sure, flounder, rockfish, steady-sellers, but you get so bored of them. Mmm. Fresh seasonal fish. I’m marrying into a seaside village.

08. 10. LUNCH

냉모밀: cold buckwheat noodles

The 10th was our day off. We couldn’t travel anywhere because everyone had conflicting schedules and it would have taken way too long to get anywhere worthwhile just to come back after a day, so instead we decided to spend a day in the city eating whatever the hell we wanted. It was to compensate for all that money on hotels and transportation that we weren’t spending. For that I think we were scrimping a little, because the restaurants we went to were mid-range, maybe mid-high at the highest but I think I’m going to say mid- because that’s, you know, correct. If I’d been given the reins I’d have looked for someplace like that crab restaurant that I went to last time, someplace completely ridiculous and over-the-top, but unfortunately I’m the gluttonous one in the family and I think people know not to let me handle the choosing of the food, or all the budget goes down the drain in record time. Anyway, lunch on the 10th was at a Japanese restaurant — Nari.

assorted sashimi

So let me try to pretend I know what I’m talking about by trying to document which kind of fish is what. From the instantly recognizable red tuna, it goes counterclockwise — red tuna, flounder (광어), snapper (or bream, I have no idea) (도미), sea bass (농어), salmon, then different parts of flounder, snapper and sea bass respectively. This is quite a chore, looking up fish names. And in the middle, abalone, my love! They say the price of abalone’s been going down since the oil spill, but I am not seeing this reflected in my day-to-day life and I demand that it be reflected accordingly.

some sort of fantastic

I am not entirely certain what that was. It was like — a citrusy salad type thing with salmon and something crunchy on top that is such a bad description but honestly, I had two of those and I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe there doesn’t need to be an established name, amirite? Maybe it’s just the citrusy salad type thing with salmon. Who cares, it was pretty damn good.

assorted sushi

The eel was great, that’s not so surprising, but the thing to the left of it was also amazing and that did shock me. It was a kind of slightly-spicy tuna salad on top of rice, but it was really awesome and also something you don’t see that often. As for everything else, eh, I’d eat it if it was in front of me but I wouldn’t go looking for it. Especially not the shrimp. Any place that offers shrimp in its arsenal of sushi automatically gets a raised eyebrow from me — it is such filler material that it’s much too obvious to mention. Come on, guys! You can do better than shrimp!

assorted tempura

And now it is time to treat to one of my brilliant and incredibly not catchy neologisms. From the really bored person that brought you “Googlefeasting”, “Babelwhacking” and “boredcore” as well as a couple others even she doesn’t bother to remember, that’s how uninteresting they are, here it is — “THE TEMPURA HORIZON”. It refers to the point of time in a course meal, usually Japanese, when the tempura is brought out. That event marks the point from which there is no longer anything in particular to look forward to, because you know that the good stuff is ending, and even if there are some okay dishes after the tempura it’s still depressing because you are no longer “eating” a meal, the tempura signifies that you are “nearing the end” of your meal. Obviously it was modeled on the event horizon, since this is a similar point of no return. This feeling is somewhat similar to the sinking sensation you get at around half past three on a Sunday afternoon, knowing that you have school on Monday and that even though Sunday isn’t quite over yet, it is definitely ending. Wow, I think this is one of my better works. Stop trying to make the tempura horizon happen, self. It’s not going to happen.

알밥: rice with tobiko

And as much as I love 알밥, there is no denying that after the tempura, it is all just going to go terribly, terribly downhill. Not in terms of the quality of the food, mind you — but if you’ve ever experienced a Sunday afternoon, you already know what I am talking about. You can have inordinate amounts of fun on Sunday evening and still have that worry gnaw the pit of your stomach at half past three. But enough about that, here is my meal and I am going to have to put off backdating things for a bit because I am off to the dentist’s office. Whee!

06. 28. DINNER

手巻き: temaki

Our parents were still out partying it up, so in wild resentment we went to the movies. But then we felt kind of guilty so we went cheap for dinner, to the same place that I had buckwheat noodles last time. Or soba noodles. I think they’re the same thing. Anyway, thanks be to the Lord for he has shown me the truth: somehow I accidentally stumbled on the Wiki article for castella, which is what the sponge cake is actually called. Not much to do with custard, but it’s a Portuguese influence on the Japanese. Now I know whom to hate. I mean. Also I hate the makers of this temaki because it was seriously pretty bad. All chewy and soggy and tasteless and generally I decided that you should never enter this restaurant and hope for sushi of any kind.

냉모밀: cold buckwheat noodles

These were fine, though. As usual. Though they’re so watery and also they’re noodles to begin with, so they go down extremely fast and you’re hungry again within the hour. But maybe that’s a good thing for keeping in shape so as long as you don’t eat anything else after the hunger strikes. I tried not to. Except for dessert, because that’s okay, some dessert is fine, I’m telling you.

팥빙수: shaved ice with red beans

It wasn’t even great anyway. Actually it wasn’t even good. We were scrimping but we wanted 팥빙수, so we decided to get it at Burger King instead of at this little restaurant that I used to love to go to but now has turned into some foul bourgeoisie establishment where every meal is an occasion and everything is upwards of fifteen dollars (which is greatly expensive for their portions and their target audience, let me assure you) and to top it all off, they don’t even have what I used to love on the menu anymore, which was this fantastic salad in a long ceramic bowl tossed with thinly sliced brisket and what have you guys done with your restaurant it’s ridiculous screw you guys man. You don’t know what you’re doing. I’m never going there again until I get a ridiculously rich boyfriend who doesn’t know how to say no. In addition, Wanted was ridiculous as well. Remember, kids, you’re nobody until you put meaning back into your lives by becoming an assassin. But it reminded me of Max Payne multiple times for multiple reasons so all was well with the world.

06. 21. LUNCH

eel roll

Maybe I should invest in some sort of alarm clock device that goes off whenever I am about to eat a meal, so that it can remind me to take the blasted picture before everything has already gone its merry way down my esophagus. Today’s mistake was even worse than usual because I wasn’t even eating out. Well, to be fair, our couch and bed were being cleaned so we ate in my brother’s room, in a bit of a hurry, and that’s my excuse. The picture is stolen from blog.naver.com/xcerver this time. Okay, I think we’re eating dinner in a regular fashion, in the living room, so hopefully I won’t also forget the dinner photograph.