A several months ago, I earned enough Open Table points to get me $20 off any Open Table restaurant bill. Since a bunch of the points were earned when Alden and I went out for lunches in River North, I thought it appropriate that I take him out to use my check.
We decided to go to Roka Akor, a fancy schmancy sushi restaurant and Japanese robata grill that we probably wouldn’t go to at dinner because it would be too expensive. It was a bit expensive even for lunch, but at least we got $20 off. We both decided to get the Roka Akor Business Lunch ($24 each), which includes red miso soup with lobster, Wagyu beef and kimchi dumplings, spicy crispy butterfish sushi rolls, steamed rice, and your choice of an entree. The entrees offerred were salmon teriyaki with pickled cucumber, cumin BBQ pork loin with shaved vegetables and cilantro, grilled seasonal vegetables with truffle soy butter, a 6 oz. prime beef filet or prime skirt steak. The steaks were $6 more. Alden went all out and got the steak. I got the salmon.
Everything that we had was pretty good. My salmon was very tasty and the portion size was larger than what I expected, for sure. Alden gave me a piece of his steak and it was flavorful and tender. I’m not a huge steak person, but it was really good. The pickled cucumber wasn’t too pickled, really refreshing. I also really liked the butterfish rolls and could see coming here for sushi and not even getting things from the grill. I thought the dumplings were alright. Not the stars of the show. The miso soup was pretty good too, but not outstanding.
I never had food cooked on the robata grill (high-heat method of searing and cooking using expensive, imported binchotan charcoal from Japan) and it was great. The grill area at Roka Akor is really pretty and it’s wide open so you can see the cooks using this unique grill. I would come back to Roka Akor, but probably only for a special occasion dinner. Just because I’m sure it tends to get swanky at night and the dinner prices can get expensive, but the food was great and the service was good, as well.
In preparation for my birthday barbecue back in September, Dallas and I went shopping out at the Super H-Mart in Niles. This Asian supermarket reminded me a lot of Mitsuwa, except that Mitsuwa is more Japanese and Super H-Mart is more Korean. (See my visit to Mitsuwa here.) But, it’s basically the same concept. Huge grocery area, a section of rice cookers and housewares, other stores around the edges, a liquor store, and a food court. Differences I noticed at H-Mart were that the produce section was really huge, in the other retail stores area there was a Best Buy with everything in Korean, and the seafood area had live fish.
Before you read any of this, know that you have to sing the post title to the tune of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA,” because that is Brian’s favorite song.
Christine and Adam and to the left, Adam’s brother Todd
Larry and Lilia, Ang & Murph
Brian, Sara, Kelly
Larry is a giant.
On Saturday night we went out for Brian’s birthday. Sara, his fiance, arranged for 16 of us to have dinner at Sakura Teppanyaki. This was a Benihana kind of place where they cook the food on a hot grill in front of you and put on a show. Uh, not that I’ve ever been to Benihana, but I went to a similar kind of place on Mauai called Kobe Japanese Steak House way back in 2009. I haven’t been to anything like this since.
Lots of shrimp, scallops, lobster, chicken and steak.
Our chef messing with Brett & Kelly.
Setting up the onion volcano.
The volcano.
All of the teppanyaki dinners were served with a grilled shrimp appetizer, miso soup, salad, grilled vegetables and fried rice. Then you got to pick what kind of entree you wanted. There was a selection of different kinds of fish, chicken, steak, filet mignon, shrimp, scallops, lobster, or calamari. Or you could get a combo. I got steak and scallops. And I upgraded my fried rice to chicken fried rice. I liked everything I had, except I wouldn’t recommend the upgrade to chicken fried rice. It’s not worth it. Otherwise it was all good. Dinners range from about $18 – 30. Not too expensive for all of the food you get. I was so stuffed at the end of dinner.
As for our chef, he was pretty funny. He quickly detected which were the people to mess with and playfully teased them while cooking our dinner. He kept saying “No sake bomb, no happy!” so we bought him a sake bomb when we got a round for the table.
Almost all the ladies were drinking these 100-calorie martinis (on the left), sake bombs on the right.
Here’s the set up: Glass of beer, sake balanced on chop sticks.
All set?
Larry showing Brian how it’s done. Everyone pounds the table.
Then the sake falls into the glass. You can see Larry’s chopsticks flying and the sake glass inside the beer glass.
Our table had countless rounds of sake bombs. I think I had 2-3 total, but some people had more. A sake bomb is served with a glass of beer and a shot glass sized serving of sake. The drinker takes their chopsticks and lays them across the top of the beer pint glass. Then they balance the sake on the top of the chopsticks. This can be tricky after a few drinks. Ask Lynda. She accidentally dropped hers in early twice and had to drink her bomb before everyone was ready.
After you have the sake balanced you pound the table and it causes the sake to fall into the beer. The should be drank immediately. To be honest, the sake bombs mostly just tasted like beer to me, but because everyone feels the need to race and chug, and the fact that there is sake in there, it can make you drunk fast. Also, the sake glass falling into the beer can be really messy. I had a lap of beer on the first round. On the second I just dropped the sake in instead of doing the chopsticks and pounding. Not as fun, but definitely less messy!
After dinner we headed over to some really cheesy Lincoln Park bars. Good thing I was drunk because these were not my kind of places! I asked Brian if I was going to feel like an old lady at the bar we were headed to. You know… not old, just too old for the club, but he said just to sit back and watch and laugh, and so I did. So, we headed to Beaumont, which most people seemed to have been to but not for a long time and not proudly. And not so early. It was dead when we arrived. No one else was there. But in no time if was filled with single 20-somethings. It was actually kind of painful to watch.
The Store til Four
Don’t ask. It was late. I get the willies just looking at this photo!
Later on we went down a few buildings to The Store.. ahem… The Store til 4. Any bar with “til 4″ in the name is probably not a good idea. I’m looking at you Tai’s til 4! I learned that lesson a few times many years ago. But Dallas and I didn’t stay out anywhere near 4 a.m. I think we caught a cab home at 2 or so.
I didn’t see Brian on Saturday but I saw him for a while on Sunday at The Scout in the South Loop where we were eating lunch and watching some football (Packers won! Lions lost! We’re the best in the league!) and it seemed like he had a good birthday weekend!
Dallas will be out of town for my birthday and through the weekend, so we celebrated my birthday by going out to dinner last night. We went to Arami, a Japanese restaurant that we’ve been wanting to try for ages. We have tried before to get in on a weeknight and they were too packed. A Tuesday evening after Labor Day was just the right time.
We ordered a ton of food. For appetizers we got edamame; seared hotate (scallop) with unagi (eel), mushrooms and shiro miso; and hamachi kama. The scallops were amazing. I wanted to lick the bowl to get all of the delicious sauce out. And the scallops were perfectly seared. The crisply unagi pairing was really good.
Hamachi kama is the prized portion of the collar of a Pacific yellowtail. Dallas and I always order this at Sansei in Hawaii when it is available, so when we saw it on the specials menu, we had to get it. It was tasty, but not as good or as big as when we get it in Hawaii. Still, we enjoyed it.
Dallas ordered an assortment of sashimi and it came out next. I was suprised because we were sitting there finishing up our appetizers and I saw a lady with a huge fishbowl type of container and it was filled with orchids and bamboo shooting out a few feet in the air. I thought at first someone ordered a huge drink. When they brought it to our table, I saw that it was filled with ice and had all of the sashimi displayed on the ice with seashells and rocks and flowers. It was gorgeous! I wasn’t taking photos during this dinner, but check out a fewhere. Beautiful presentation aside, the fish was super fresh and very tasty. Dallas loved it.
For an entree I got two maki rolls. One was with hamachi (yellowtail), tuna, scallion, jalapeno, shrimp and spicy mayo. This was a great, clean tasting roll. It did have some mayo on it, but not an excessive amount that would mask the taste of the fish. Also, the spice was just the right level of spicy. My other roll had kani (king crab) and ebi (shrimp) and almonds. This was my favorite of the two rolls.
Dallas got the kimchi ramen with tofu, pork belly, a poached egg and scallions. He loved it. I think he’s going to divorce me and marry it. After eating all the ramen and scraping the bottom for more, he was too full to think about dessert. Arami offers mochi and gelato. I opted for a toasted sesame, fig and chocolate chip ice cream and loved the flavor combination.
So, really great birthday dinner. I’m sure we’ll be back here again. I think it’s our new favorite sushi spot!
Our annual dinner-and-a-show night this year was way late. My mom’s birthday was last November, but we just got around to it this past weekend. I wanted to wait until after the wedding in February. When I looked at the schedule then, we decided on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which was only running for a few weeks during the summer. So, summer it is.
My mom and my dad came down to Chicago on Saturday afternoon. We visited a bit and went for a walk before going out for dinner at Gosu, a new Japanese and Korean restaurant in Logan Square. Then my mom and I caught the train downtown and barely made it to the show in time, while Dallas and my dad hung out at home.
When I lived in New York I knew someone who played the french horn in the orchestra for Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. So, that means that this show has been going on for at least something like 10 years17 years. I was glad to finally get to see it! It was everything I expected. All the songs and the scenes. Gorgeous sets. Such talented actors. I had not seen the cartoon for many, many years. As the show went along, the pieces of the story came back to me. Gaston, Maurice, Lumeire.
On Sunday we all went out for lunch at Lillie’s Q. I thought my dad would really enjoy the southern cooking and barbecue and he did! We tried so many things – boiled peanuts, hush puppies, ribs, pulled pork, pulled chicken, collard greens (x 2), baked beans, macaroni and cheese, and corn bread. All SO delicious. I really like this restaurant. Check out my photos from Lillie’s Q here.
As we were leaving the theater my mom said that she was trying to think up all of the shows we’d seen over the years. Well, here’s the list!
