the world is your acorn

when we first moved here, the little red haired girl used to go to knitting circles.

The Little Red Haired Girl and I went to the new sushi place, O’sake on Elliston, for lunch yesterday. I didn’t have super high expectations but we thought it was really good. The lunch menu had a ton of bento boxes in the $10 range, with the typical combinations of teriyaki, gyoza, california rolls, and tempura. There were also some sushi combination possibilities in the $10-$20 range. Also fairly typical; two rolls from a set list of possibilities, or a roll and some pieces of nigiri (the standards, like tuna, salmon, and eel). There was other stuff on the menu, of course, but nothing mind-blowingly original or interesting for a sushi place.

The Little Red Haired Girl ordered a salmon teriyaki bento box which included soup, salad, veggie tempura, and a california roll. We were pleasantly surprised with how good the teriyaki was. The sauce was not overwhelmingly sticky and sweet like it can be, the fish was done just right, and there were a lot of fresh vegetables included (as opposed to a giant hunk of steamed broccoli or something like that). Possibly the best teriyaki that we’ve had in a Japanese restaurant here (we don’t go looking for it often, so I won’t make any claims past that). Everything else in the box was good, better than “fine,” which I feel like bento lunches tend to be here. (I’ve been to restaurants where the chefs add lots of little treats to them. I miss that).

I had the cheaper version of the 2 roll combination, so the roll choices were pretty standard. I had a tuna and avo roll and an alaska roll. The menu said I’d choose between soup and salad, but they brought me both, which was nice. There was a good amount of fish in both rolls, and they were done nicely. I hate to have to mention it, but the sushi rice was also really nice. Altogether we spent about $20 for lunch (we both drank water). Service was good, and in the end a couple different people came up to us to make sure everything was good and to invite us back. We also got a 10% off our next visit coupon. I think we’ll go back. The Little Red Haired Girl isn’t eating raw fish right now, so we’ll check out their sashimi another time. For now, they’re a really good choice for something close by that’s good and not too expensive.

We visited Samurai on Elliston Place last night, after hearing many positive reviews of the place as “the best sushi in Nashville.” Granted we always take that kind of recommendation with a grain of salt for various reasons, but we were still expecting something pretty stellar. We had a pretty good experience, despite some pretty huge disappointments.

We ordered:
Standard salad, miso, 6 orders of sashimi a la carte, 1 order nigiri, a couple of rolls, a couple of beers

Some things:
+ dressing on the salad was quite good, but standard
+ sashimi was good portions, and pretty damn delicious
- we found out when the check came that they added $1 to each sashimi order (the pricing on the list is for nigiri. The server told us that the sashimi order was 3-5 pieces per order instead of 2, but did not tell us it was a dollar extra)
+ the sweet shrimp comes with the shrimp head deep fried in batter and drizzled with unagi sauce. yum.
- the sushi rice was not properly seasoned, and didn’t taste like anything
- the soy sauce was not sushi soy sauce. it didn’t taste right with any of the sushi
+ the presentation was gorgeous
- the mackerel was too warm, and too wet by the time it got to the table
- the wasabi was clearly the powdered kind (which we are used to and is usually ok), but this version didn’t seem to taste like anything
- the pickled ginger was virtually flavorless

I guess if you add up the minuses and the pluses there are a lot more minuses, and they’re sort of deal breakers. We decided that we’ll stick with Sonobana on White Bridge, but we’d give Samurai one more try if the opportunity arose. The fish was good, and relatively affordable – we only spent $71 before tax on all that fish. But if the next visit is the same, I don’t think we’d go back.

This weekend we discovered Aleksey’s Russian & Eastern European Market near 100 Oaks. We’d noticed it before, and maybe for 4 years we’ve been saying that we should check it out. So, on Saturday, during errands, we finally went. And kids, if you see something, you should always say something. I can’t believe that for 4 years we were basically too lazy to walk into this place. The irony is, I think that if we weren’t so miserable here, we might not bother doing these weird new things. We had just spent 4 glorious days back in the Boston area the week before, where we saw as many old friends as we could and ate, drank, and danced our hearts out. It was really hard to be back here, where good food is not as readily available, the folks we became adults with are far away, and the queer community just is not a good fit. Anyway, Aleksey’s was a nice reminder just at the right time that we’re going to make it, and enjoy ourselves in the meanwhile.

In the store we encountered all kinds of unrecognizable goodies, many of which we bought. An array of enticing canned fish and pates, pickles, smoked fish, baked goods, juices, jams, frozen items, candies. And if that weren’t enough, a whole case of sausages! We bought some cans, a bottle of black currant juice, some pickles called “grandma’s salad,” and a kinder surprise. Then, The Little Red Haired Girl asked the nice lady behind the counter which sausages she recommends, and she gave us samples. We walked away with half a pound each of something called “Karpatskaya” and something called “Tsar Salami.” All of that we bought for around $30. Freaking awesome.

Goodbye, crappy Kroger with your difficult to navigate aisles, congested parking lot, frozen seafood counter, and tiny meat selection.* Goodbye, tiny Harris Teeter where you have to go upstairs for things. Well, probably not goodbye, but see you way less often, cause Publix is finally opening!

Grand opening is January 14, 7am-10pm.

I am going to camp out overnight and be the first one in.

*heh. I said tiny meat.

NYE 2007 small plate extravaganza

Chinese New Year party

Crawfish birthday for Mrs. Superhero

AERA in nyc

Oliver’s first ride on the boat

The Little Red Haired Girl graduates!

4th of July on the river

The Superheroes move on to their new life in NC

Dr. J moves on to her new life in Chicago

Dim sum comes to Nashville

My special special weekend (stagette)

I turn 30

1st mani pedi ever

8 course Chinese banquet rehearsal dinner

Married!

Fantastic Boston/Ptown honeymoon

“An historic election”

Trader Joe’s comes to Nashville

Thanksgiving in the new house

We make friends with our neighbors, finally

Holi-day-of-eating at New Little Buddies’ house

NYE 2008 in New Orleans

The picture is kinda crappy, but I had the duck breast at Sunset Grill the other night and it was delicious.

The Little Red Haired Girl and I went back to Ouyang House yesterday with another friend of ours to give the dim sum another go. There seemed to be more people there this time, and twice as many carts. We had some new things this time, including pan fried dumplings, stuffed chive pancake things, sesame balls, and crystal shrimp dumplings. We also ordered salt and pepper shrimp, which were perfect and delicious.

We also talked to the hostess, who remembered us from last time. She is, apparently, off to New York soon to pick up some ingredients for the chef so he can expand his menu. They are also waiting on a noodle machine so they can make the rice noodle roll things. I was happy to hear that this dim sum venture is looking successful so far, and I’ll definitely keep going back to see the new things going on and to support what they’re trying to do. You should go too.

Yes, there is dim sum in Nashville! After I read about Ouyang House on the Scene’s Bites Blog last week, I immediately made plans to go. We got there at around 11:30 this morning, and saw right away the rows and rows of buffet. When they were ready to seat us I asked if there was dim sum, and the led us off to a room to the left where just two tables were occupied. Our server came over and immediately addressed me in Mandarin (the other two I was with are white), asking what kind of tea we wanted and saying that she’d bring a menu. It was kind of hilarious, since I haven’t been mistaken for a Chinese-speaker for a long time. I can actually sort of hold my own in basic conversation, but my vocabulary recall gets worse and worse and my accent has become embarrassing. For the rest of the meal I sort of bumbled along, trying to stick to Chinese when I could and switching to English when I had to.

The menu was clearly the special Chinese-people-menu, and had some dishes listed only in Chinese on one side and the familiar dim sum items on the other. That side had English translations, but soon our server rolled a cart over with a bunch of different things on it and I just picked from there. I’m happy to report that they had just about everything that we generally expect from dim sum (although we didn’t see the head-on shrimp that The Little Red Haired Girl loves), and it was all quite delicious. I wasn’t responsible enough to take pictures of any food, but imagine steamed pork buns, shaomai, short ribs, bean curd skin roll, eggplant stuffed with shrimp, fried sweet rice and pork dumpling, taro dumplings, and a couple other things I can’t remember. Probably because of the small number of occupied tables there wasn’t that much variety in the cart, but we could have ordered what we wanted from the menu.

The service was really nice; our server brought over the taro dumplings as soon as they came out of the fryer to see if we wanted them. She kept recommending things on the menu to me too, but I could only partially follow the things she was pointing out. We did order one bigger dish that was a wide rice noodle and shrimp thing, which was fantastic. So, it’s not quite the cavernous banquet halls of restaurants in New York with a cart rolling by every few minutes with new piping hot items. But it’s a great start. We’ll go back, probably soon, just to support their endeavor. We think you should go too. I think you can always order the dim sum items, but it’s weekends when they have the cart(s).

Oh, and we spent just over $30 between the three of us, including tax and tip.

Ouyang House is at 4523 Nolensville Pike, just South of K & S International Market. They open at 11am. Let me know if you go, I’ll come with you. Especially if you read Chinese.