Yuzu

January 25, 2013

Date #68

I have a tendency to always want to go to the same types of restaurants, so I wanted to change things up a bit tonight. I chose a small Japanese restaurant in Beaverton called Yuku, it is definitely small, and hard to find. It is in a small strip mall just off Canyon Rd, but no neon sign on the outside, just a sign on the door. We were told we would need to wait for 20 minutes so we went across the street to PetCo to look around. We got back right in time to be seated at the bar, which really wasn't a bar. The place was packed and didn't empty out the entire time; many people were turned away because of the long wait.

Chuck started off with pork, veggie, and mozzarella spring rolls, he said they were yummy. They didn't have any appetizers without meat that looked good to me, but that was ok because I wanted to leave room for the ramen.

I had soy sauce ramen with egg noodles and a soft boiled egg. To my surprise the egg was very tasty in this dish, and the noodles were the best ramen noodles I have ever tried, I almost asked for a second helping of noodles, but I didn't. This isn't the best place for a vegetarian, but I did ok.

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Chuck had the kakuni ramen with pork belly. There was plenty of pork and noodles in a very tasty broth. He enjoyed it so much the bowl was dry at the end; he said he wanted to see the picture at the bottom of the bowl. 

Very nice place, but very busy,  I heard people coming in saying they had a reservation, next time we will do this.

La Cerreta Mexican Restaurant

January 18, 2013

Date #67

We started our night out by driving towards downtown Portland, as we got closer Chuck asked me if I knew how to get to the Ross Island bridge. Unfortunately, this is not one of the areas of Portland that I know well, so we had to follow the signs on the I-5. The problem with going over this particular bridge tonight was another popular bridge, the Sellwood bridge, was closed because it is being rebuild due to its age, and bad bridge rating of 1 out of 100, yikes! And we didn’t know an alternate route to the Ross Island bridge, so we had to stay where we were, and it took about 30 minutes to cross, not too bad. We finally got to the other side of the river and found La Carreta Mexican restaurant, yummy my favorite ethnicity.

This is a very old building, and I am told the restaurant has been there for ages. We were taken upstairs to a banquet/bar room with plenty of tables and people, and were presented chip and salsa, my favorite appetizer. I think the most exciting part of going to a new Mexican restaurant is tasting the salsa to see if we like it. I love mild chunky salsa, and this was it, just a bit spicy and plenty of veggies, so good! A mariachi band consisting of 3 very small men came by to sing us a song, it was something about a beautiful diamond. It was fun, but also a bit embarrassing to have everyone in the restaurant looking at us. 

I ordered my new favorite Mexican dish chili relleno, it came with rice and beans, and a cabbage salad. The chili relleno was heavily breaded which wasn’t that tasty, but it was easy to remove the breading and just eat the chili, egg, and cheese. It was very good, and the red sauce complemented it nicely. The rice and beans were excellent as well, the plate was very large, and I wasn’t able to finish all the food.

Chuck order a combination dish of a taco, tamale, and enchilada, and rice and beans. The taco was placed in the enchilada sauce so it was a bit soggy, but the taste was great. He could tell the meat had been simmering all day long, so soft and flavorful. The tamale tasted very good, but the meat was too big and chunky, would have tasted much better with the taco meat. He agreed with me that both the rice and beans were very tasty.

Really good restaurant, we both commented that we should bring our parents here on their next visit, this place was pretty authentic, not Phoenix, but great for Portland. Great find Chuck!

Sushi Hana

January 11, 2013

Date #66

When I first tried sushi I didn’t like it because of the texture. Over the years I have grown to love it, mostly the California rolls, and had it at quite a few different places. The one style of sushi I have never had is the restaurant that offers it on a conveyor belt. So tonight is conveyor belt sushi at Sushi Hana, people from work have gone there often and say it's realy good.

We arrived around 8pm, and the place was packed, and not much room to wait for a place in front of the conveyor belt, but we add our names to the list and watch the fun. We are sat at a corner which is good, just a little more room for us to move around. We had to sit on our jackets because there’s not much room for anything but your body to sit on the stool. We order out drinks and are set free to pick from the interesting offerings on this wonderful conveyor belt.

   
We are a little nervous to start, we don’t want to pick the wrong thing, and me not picking any weird meat. They had a small picture guide to help us out, but it was still hard to find what we wanted in the beginning. After our first selection it became easier, Chuck was in heaven and I the same. Each plate cost around $1.75 and had 3-6 large pieces of sushi. Everything was very fresh and flavorful.  It was so much fun watching everyone doing their picking, and hoping if we spotted our next selection that no one if front of us would pick it. We never had this happen, there was always plenty to choose from. The only one Chuck couldn’t find was one made with eel but I think we could have special ordered it.
Besides the sushi the conveyor belt also offered fruit, pie, drinks, and cream puffs. I had to try one of the cream puffs, they were drizzled with chocolate and so delicious, perfect dessert after sushi. We left stuffed and with a bill of less than $30, very nice! Now off to walk around Petco and some groceries at Winco, two things Chuck loves to do.

Muu Muu's

January 4, 2013

Date #65

We were off to one of our new favorite areas of Portland, the NW 21st area and Muu Muu’s. It’s a bar but a restaurant or a restaurant with loud music, anyway it’s a hip place in Portland.

We started out with your favorite salad, caprese. We just love the combination of tomato, basic, and mozzarella, this version came with a bowl vinaigrette for dipping, very nice.

Next I had a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato on Straun bread which made the sandwich. I had never had this type of bread before, it is hearty and flavorful, I think it would be good for any grilled sandwich. This was a simple sandwich and very tasty, so happy I tried it.

Chuck had jambalaya with shrimp, Andouille sausage and chicken over rice. It was a bit spicy for him, but he ate the whole bowl.
Chuck’s friends from work showed up, we had a nice visit before leaving around 11pm. The streets were packed with people out for a fun time on Friday night.