Year of the Horse Tet Celebrations

This Tet New Year's celebration was made even more special because my baby sister was in town. That meant we spent even more time eating, gambling away lucky money and, well...more eating. There's a Tet superstition that your year will be determined by the first person who steps foot into your home and we're happy to report our new home was blessed by family, so we know it will be a great year. Our Dad was born in the Year of the Horse, so of course he took most of money, including an epic final 3-card hand - should be a lucky year for him! If you're interested in what the Year of the Horse will bring you can read a little about it here. Happy New Year Everyone!

Ba's Benihana Birthday

Last year we surprised my dad with a beach week birthday, but that was a milestone birthday. This year we're back to our typical "Your Choice of Restaurant" birthday celebration. This year Dad wanted dinner and a show, so he suggested a teppanyaki restaurant. After asking around and consulting the internet we were informed the only real teppanyaki restaurant in the Portland area is world wide chain restaurant Benihana. So we used Open Table, earned our 100 points and made reservations for a night of dinner and theater.  

Dinner at Benihana's is fairly pricey, but it came with a lot of extras. Of course we started with a nice carafe of sake served cold in the most amazing little iced sake carafe.

A waitress walked us through the menu and how it all works. It took a minute to go through the menu, we placed our order, had a somewhat salty Japanese onion soup, and our chef arrived at the hot flat grill and the main portion of the meal began.

Our meal came with white rice, but we could substitute fried rice for an extra cost. It was fun to watch the chef whisk around an egg with just his spatula and knife. It was hard to believe that the egg wasn't a hard boiled egg the way we rolled and tossed it around before cracking it on the grill to become the base of our fried rice. Which was really good.

Next came the grilled veggies and shrimp, which the chef sliced and diced and removed the tails efficiently and quickly.

The big draw of Benihana's is their grilled steaks, but Mike & I were going to share so we opted for the Seafood Diablo and their largest steak-the 12.5 oz filet mignon. The Seafood Diablo consisted of grilled udon noodles, vegetables, shrimp, scallops and squid. Man was this dish delicious. We did not take a single piece of this seafood noodle dish home. There were no leftovers. Everything was terrific and the most tender scallop and squid we've had in awhile.

The rest of us opted for steaks and scallops (Land and Sea), all medium-rare. Once these thick cut steaks hit the grill and the smoke started floating in the air, the cameras came out. These steaks were a thing of beauty.

When the chef first cut into the steaks they were perfectly medium-rare, but by the time they hit our plates they were more medium, but we didn't mind too much, the choice meats were still terrific.

Apparently Benihana's is a popular birthday restaurant, we probably heard happy birthday (English and Japanese) about every 10-15 minutes in the 2 hours we were there. We were really happy with the choice, the restaurant is beautiful, the service is great and the food was terrific. Happy Birthday BA, hope it was a great one!



Benihana
9205 SW Cascade Avenue
Beaverton, Oregon
503.643.4016

Family Birthday: Shigezo Izakaya

We waited until the holidays to celebrated mom's birthday when everyone would be home, which provided a terrific reason to book the tatami room at Shigezo Izakaya and gorge ourselves on Japanese pub grub. This restaurant is quickly turning into one of our favorite places in the Portland and is the perfect place for a birthday celebration! 

The tatami room all dressed up and ready for the party.

Sashimi Mackerel was almost too gorgeous to eat.

Seared Mackerel Sushi was a huge hit, so good.

Asian fried chicken is quickly becoming my favorite style of fried chicken, flavorful and only dark meat! YES!

A twist on the concept of Miso Cod with a Bechamel Sauce.

Happy Birthday ME!

Thanksgiving Long Weekend

I think I love Thanksgiving because we get a long 4-day weekend. In previous years I'm always disappointed that the weekend flew by so quickly and I realize that's because I always lose 2 precious days: one to making the whole Thanksgiving meal and one to cleaning up after. So by Saturday I feel as if it's just another weekend. At least we had a kitchen full of delicious food and plenty to be thankful for.

This year Friday was rainy and we didn't set foot outside once, which was really nice. We casually cleaned up, lit lots of candles and watched more movies than we have in awhile. Due to a kitchen faucet that trickled out enough water to wash one chopstick at a time, we were glad to have a leisurely day to clean because we needed it.

Leftovers day 1 snack: cheddar cheese, stuffing, turkey and gravy

Leftovers day 2 snack: cream cheese, cranberry sauce, turkey and gravy

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and even better 4-days off!