Good discovery, bad discovery

A while ago, my brother and I saw a brand new Japanese restaurant (called Gawa) opening, so we decided to go give it a try. A first look at the menu gave me these initial thoughts: "hey, pretty decent prices and a pretty wide selection of rolls that I eat (since I am really picky and I don't eat a lot of things". Unfortunately, when the food came, the reality was far from what I had in mind.

Before I even get to the food, I wanna say that it took a long time for the food to come. The restaurant was not busy at all. In fact, there were maybe two tables, including us, seated inside the entire place, so I didn't understand why the kitchen was so slow.

Putting the speed aside... Here's the food:

1. Mango avocado yam tempura roll? (I don't remember what it was called):

The presentation was alright... could be better. It tasted okay, but there was too much rice and the yam tempura was COLD =_=.

2. Spider roll:

The crab was too salty and wasn't hot.

...and again, too much rice!

Look at the proportion of rice to the other ingredients in the roll O_O...

That new restaurant was such a disappointment. I certainly will not recommend others to go there, but I will give them the benefit of the doubt and maybe try this place one more time in the future. Maybe they were still figuring things out during their first few days of opening, so I hope their food quality will improve later on.

Thankfully, I discovered something yummy to counter the disappointment...

Krispy Kreme!! =D

Look at these beautiful, fatty, yum-yums.

I'm not sure if discovering the Krispy Kreme was a good thing or a bad thing... because I know I will be returning for sure (hopefully not too frequently) and I'm going to gain a few pounds from all that yummy goodness badness.

Fun, then study...

SO sorry for not updating... But I was caught up in various things...
There are so many birthdays and events going on in February. And then there was my midterm that I actually spent days studying (I usually am not that hard-working lol). Let me update on a few things =]

First of all...

My dear Eva's birthday!!

This girl had two awesome cakes XD

Isn't this cake so adorable?

I wouldn't have been able to cut into the cake haha

Pics lol

This was when we were waiting for the host to find a knife for the b-day girl to cut the cake lol

Another thing that was keeping me occupied aside from what I've mentioned already is my new room!

I'm going to make my room pink and girly hahaha

and BAM! 3 walls done.

I am leaving one of the walls and giving that wall an even pinker pink. I'm excited to see how the room will turn out XD

And lastly, because I know how much everyone loves food...

Look at THIS!!

Here is the dish with the birthday boy in the picture for comparison so you can all see how huge the dish was.

Despite the wonderful sashimi dish looking so colorful and pretty, I don't eat sashimi so I only got to look lol.

I'm going to leave off here...
Will blog about high tea next post =]

Guu'd food

It was my brother's birthday and we went out to eat at Guu =D
I will not be saying much this post... Instead, I will just spam this post with food pictures to make you guys jelly. Hahaha!
(It's actually because I am too lazy to type up paragraphs today, but I still want to share some pics of yummy food with you guys.)

I'll probably come back and edit this post and put in the names of the dishes later on.

Started off with this cute dish.

They even wrote "Guu" with the sauce:

And then we went to eat gelato for dessert.
Onomnomnomnom =9

Happy birthday bro (even though it's past your birthday already)!

Balance the bad with some good

On Thursday, I was planning to go Science World to see their dinosaur exhibit, but they changed their hours and was going to be closed in less than half an hour by the time we arrived there... So we decided to shop at Metrotown instead - it was only a 15 minute skytrain ride =P.

We shopped until 8:30pm and went to try the all-you-can-eat at Sushi Garden.
It was horrible. I regret suggesting to try the restaurant =_=.

I took a picture of their menu so I can remember the dishes so I can complain about them lol.

Here's a picture of some of the food we ordered...

Now, I will talk about the food individually (I'll try to describe them the best I can without being too harsh):

1. Miso Soup: I found this to be ok, but Jackie said it tasted like it was watered down.
2. Green Salad: Way too much sauce. But the dish is pretty decent if you scoop away some of the extra sauce.
3. Ebi Sunomono: This was alright... But you can't really screw up this dish. It had only one tiny piece of baby ebi.
4. Agedashi Tofu: Possibly the worst agedashi tofu I have ever tasted. They were kinda cold and really soggy. The outside, which is supposed to be crispy, was a gross mushy texture. The inside (the tofu part) was hard. Fail.
5. Dynamite Roll: Gross. The shrimp tempura inside is cold and the crispy batter was soggy - just like the agedashi tofu.
6. Chicken Karaage: This was decent. It was at least hot when it came to our table and the inside of the chicken wing was juicy.
7. Beef Teriyaki: I thought teriyaki dishes are supposed to cooked more like teppanyaki style? But the beef looked + tasted like it was just boiled in water and had sauce poured over it.
8. Vegetable Teriyaki: Same issue as the beef teriyaki.
9. Deep Fried Gyoza: Bleh. Nothing special. However, they helped you "pre-dip" these in vinegar, which I didn't like.
10. Vegetable Tempura: These were decent. Surprisingly, the tempura batter was not soggy like the batter in the dynamite roll and the agedashi tofu.
11. Creamy Corn Croquette: This was chewy. Wtf. It is supposed to be deep-fried so it is crispy. Why is it freakin chewy???
12. Scallop Motoyaki: It had a really strong "fish" smell. And the scallops inside were kinda hard.
13. Seafood Fried Rice: Disgusting. Maybe because I don't like salmon... but even Jackie hated it, and he loves salmon. The rice was not "fried rice" at all. It was like normal cooked rice mixed with a bunch of stuff.
14. Mango Pudding: It was ok... but not worth another order. The pudding was too hard.
15. Fresh Fruits: What they mean by that is slices of oranges. This was the best dish out of all the dishes we ordered that night.

We ordered more than that, but I didn't taste everything.
To sum it up, the food was so bad that we had to secretly wrap some in napkins and throw them away in the washroom to avoid being charged extra.
The all-you was $13.95 per person but there is no way in hell it is worth that amount.

On a positive note, though, I got myself an adorable Buzz Lightyear figurine thing from one of those gatchapon machines XD.

Isn't he cute?

After a horrendous night of bad sushi, we made it up by going to Kiriri the following night XP.
Let me just post the pictures and let them speak for themselves (actually, it's because I am tired from typing all those complaints about the sushi at Sushi Garden).

Salmon Sashimi

Chopped Scallop Roll

The corn went together with the chopped scallops really well.

Black Cod Miso

Dynamite Roll

This was different from other dynamite rolls. They put a spicy mayo inside.

The roll was super tasty, though. The tempura was freshly made =9

Vanilla Ice Cream with Hot Red Bean

Looks very nice, but it actually didn't taste like anything special lol

Green Tea Creme Brulee

I just had to order this again. So good =D

Well...

That sums up my two days of sushi-ing... But I'm still craving spider rolls O_o

Discovered a yummy restaurant

My family and I were planning to eat out for dinner, but when we got to the restaurant, it was closed. I guess because it's a Sunday.
I honestly don't get why restaurants close early - they're not shopping malls, people eat dinner every day but people don't shop every single day. What I don't get even more is that some restaurants will close just when it gets to the peak hours. Like Takeya at Blundell for example... it closes at 8pm. Wtf?

Anyway... enough ranting...
Since the restaurant we wanted to go to was closed, we randomly went to a Japanese restaurant that we have never been to before. It's called Kiriri.
I have to say that I'm glad that we stumbled onto this little restaurant today. I wish I knew about this place earlier. The food is really good *u*

Started off with salmon sashimi, which I did not eat. But I'm guessing it was good because the sashimi was gone in a minute lol.

Salmon Tartar

Another dish that I don't eat, but I ordered it for my parents to try.

There were little mango pieces at the bottom that you can't see in this picture. That was the only part of this dish I tried and it was good, haha.

Black Cod Miso

Omg. This. Was. Amazing.

The fish was so perfectly cooked and marinated. It almost felt like it melts in my mouth =9

My favorite dish of the night.

Age-Udon

This was yummy too. The soup (which I forgot to take a picture of) was so flavorful and the dish was so good when the deep fried udon soaked up the soup.

Kani Special

Dungeness crab. You can't go wrong with that.

This was so good!!!

Spider Roll

The best spider roll I've ever had. No joke.

The soft shelled crab was not too salty and super crunchy. Nom nom nom.

Cream Anmitsu

My brother's dessert. I didn't try this because I was too busy eating my own LOL.

Green Tea Creme Brulee

It had a different name on the menu but I forgot what it was.

The creme brulee was SO GOOD. Too bad it was such a small portion. I'll be coming back for more lol

Mmm... just posting and looking at these pictures makes me want to go back there right now and eat some more. I'll go back for sure. Hopefully soon, haha. I just wish their food was in bigger portions.

Stuff... Sushi, chocolate, perfume, lipstick

Going to blog about two days in this entry, so that is why the randomness of this entry is even more random than some of my other random entries ^_^".

I was debating on whether to get the DKNY Be Delicious Fresh Blossom perfume, or the Salvatore Ferragamo F for Fascinating Night perfume. Then, I realized there were no more DKNY in the size I wanted. They only the size I wanted in the ugly limited edition bottle, which I didn't want to get. So, I got the Ferragamo perfume.

Salvatore Ferragmo: F for Fascinating Night

Smells so fresh and sweet.

Less citrusy than the DKNY one... of course, both are two different scents.

Then, I finally went to get the NYX round lipsticks. I never knew Save On carried this brand until sometime last week. I was so excited and went to check it out XD.

NYX Lipsticks

Left: 618 Georgia

Right: 626 Vitamin

TIME TRAVEL BACK to YESTERDAY!

My brother and I went to Tokyo Joe's to eat. It was only my second time there, but I had a very good impression of the place from the first time, so I decided to bring my brother there... Just to find out that he has already been there before lol.

Gomae

So much seeds! I loved the gomae here. Perfect proportion of sauce and spinach. And I loved how the sauce has a lot of sesame seeds so it's a bit crunchy.

Miso Soup

Unlimited free miso soup. What can be better than that? Unlimited green onions with the soup. LOL!

As you can see, I love green onions.

Maki & Sashimi

Salmon & tuna sashimi - which my brother said was good, but I did not try since I don't like raw fish.

Mango california rolls - I don't know why, I love mango in sushi.

Dynamite roll - I found this roll to be too "fat/wide". I didn't like how I couldn't eat it in one bite...

 

Chopped Scallop Roll

This was pretty good. But because I'm not a fan of raw things, I didn't eat much. Raw scallops are the only raw things I eat at sushi places because they are chopped up into little pieces. I hate the slimy texture of raw foods >_<.

Instead of eating dessert at the restaurant, I bought Godiva chocolate bars from the mall while waiting for my brother to get application forms. Hahaha.

I'm going to slack off one more day tomorrow, and I really have to start nerding up for my upcoming exam. I'd go crazy if I failed that course because I hate it so much. Retaking it would be such a pain in the ass.

Sushi on a hot day

Hot summer weather.
Let's balance it with some cool, Japanese food ;)

Last night (although it didn't feel like night because it was so bright outside), I went to eat at Yokohama with my family for dinner.

Tobiko with egg

Interesting to try, but not worth $2.25.

Philadelphia Roll

Didn't try this cuz it had salmon in it. But my brother said it was good, lol.

Grilled Squid

Overcooked. It tasted burnt and bitter =(

Salmon sashimi

Again, did not try because it is salmon.

Crunch Roll (?)

Forgot if that is the name, but this roll was good.

Love the combination of mango and coconut. You can't go wrong with that XP

Then, I brought them to Timothy's Frozen Yogurt to get dessert.
I forgot to take a picture of our yogurts... I guess I was too eager to eat it, haha.