Guu with Garlic

Oh Guu~~ I always have such a good time at your place!  What’s your secret?

For this particular visit, I’m sure the culprit must be the pitcher of Aloe Vera Mojito ($16.5) shared among two girls.  Yep.  That must be it.

This was refreshing.  I liked chewing on the mint leaves but there really aren’t that much aloe vera bits.  Also, despite downing the whole pitcher, we didn’t really get that drunk, which means there really wasn’t that much booze in it.  We did still manage to get a decent light buzz though.

I’m addicted to avocados lately so anything with that in it catches my attention.  I picked this Prawns & Avocado Wasabi mayo Tartar ($6.80) because of that.

It was a light, refreshing dish.  The prawns were actually cooked which surprised me as I was expecting sashimi-style like how a tuna/beef/salmon tartar would’ve been.  The fact that it’s cooked prawns and contributes to the fact that it yields little prawn taste to this.  It was more avocado than anything.

The wasabi aspect was detectable but not overwhelmingly-so, which was fine my me.  This tasted awesome when eaten atop the supplied prawn chips…but now that I think about it…it’s probably because the prawn chips had more flavor than the main attraction.

We knew from the get-go we wanted deep-fried prawn heads, so we ordered the Amaebi sashimi ($6.80).

Tsuki no Shizuku 月の雫 – Shin-Osaka

I absolutely LOVED, LOVED LOOOOOOOOOVED our first dinner/meal in Japan.  As we arrived quite late in the day in Osaka, we decided to spend the night at a hotel near the airport in the city of Shin-Osaka.  After we checked in, we walked around in search for food.  We were hungry!!

Just across the intersection of our hotel, we saw this big light box with the words “Everything 270Yen”.  It was Tsuki no Shizuku.  They had their menu placed outside so we took a look.  They even had a sign that says they had English menus!!!  As we were hungry, we quickly decided this would be the place and we stepped inside.

And MAN the Japanese are AWESOME!!!  When they say they have English menu, they meant that their TOUCH-SCREEN MENU has English!!!  A TOUCH-SCREEN MENU YO!!!  It was really fun and awesome!!!

Oh ya, we started off with Plum-wine drinks.  I had the Apricot Brandy and L had the Green Tea one. You got to pick it “on the rocks”, “with water”, “with soda water”.  We both had it with soda water.  It was a pretty big mug when it arrived.  We were so estatic~!!!

I found the apricot better as the green tea kind of brought a weird flavor to the plum wine.

When we sat down one of the servers very enthusiastically, using a combination of limited but passable English and hand gestures, recommended their homemade tofu.  As that’s one of the things I’ve always wanted to try while in Japan, we ordered it.

It was really really nice.  The aroma of soy bean was very prominent.  The texture was not what I expected though.  It was more of a grainy texture, not yet gritty though.  It was simply served by a sprinkling of salt on top.  I loved it.

ShuRaku Sake Bar and Bistro

For F’s birthday dinner, I chose for us to head to Downtown via the Canada Line.  It’s convenient and since F and O haven’t been on it before, I thought it’ll be fun.

My restaurant choice that night was ShuRaku Japanese Bistro.

Just get off at Vancouver City Centre Station and walk 1.5 blocks and you’re there.  Directly across from Urban Outfitters.

The restaurant is basically one long corridor.  It’s not too dark so it’s great for taking pictures.  I love this kind of ambiant lighting.  Although it was a Wednesday night, it didn’t take long for this place to fill up.

Toratatsu Again – CLOSED

The bunch of us congregated in Downtown again to attend M’s convocation at the new Vancouver Convention Centre.  Afterwards, we had to decide where to go for dinner and I suggested Toratatsu since we all like Izakayas.

As usual we’re all supposed to pick something.  We ordered a bunch of stuff, some I’ve already blogged about, some new.

I started out with one of their cocktails- Drunk Melon ($7.50).  It has sake, melon and orange into it.  F and I both agreed that we didn’t taste any orange in it.  It was alright though.

3 others ordered Green Tea ($2.50).  It was interesting to see the tea leaves.

It was really flavorful and fragrant.  Even after 3 refills, the tea was still very aromatic.

Soul Robata & Izakaya 魂

F and I met up with the gang on Sunday for dinner to catch up.  W chose the place and she chose Soul Robata & Izakaya on Alexandra Road.  As it was a Sunday I was weary of parking there, so I got Boyfriend to drop me off.  That proved to be a smart choice.

I expected the place to be dark like most other Izakayas.  However there were large windows that allowed lots of natural light in.  Otherwise, it was decorated like any other Japanese tapas restaurant.

Also like most Izakayas, they have a specials menu in addition to their regular everyday menu.

As usual, we each picked something and as usual, F didn’t pick anything.

First to arrive was the Deep-fried Scallops.  Personally, I wouldn’t have ordered this as my opinion was that particularly at a Japanese restaurant, that either scallops be eaten fresh as sashimi (they’re so sweet), or not at all.  Especially not deep-fried, ‘cuz then you KNOW it’s not fresh stuff.

As expected, I found them dry and flavorless.  There was way too much batter and the okonomi-sauce really took away any other flavors that could’ve been there.