It was unexpectedly cold today so I opted to buy ochazuke from my favourite bento shop for lunch. Ah. Simple but definitely Goodfood! 🙂
Salmon flakes. Nori. Rice crackers. Pickled vegetables. Dashi (fish broth) stock.
and hurray! I can finally post photos! Am not sure of the reason though but I did two things – update my iOS and deleted some apps to have more storage. Now, I-have-to-find-time to catch up with blog backlogs.
Wait, Mommy, I’ll fix my glasses first.
Okay, I’m ready for photoshoot! 🙂
We went on a road trip with a couple of friends and their baby on our last vacay in Ph and stopped over at Breakfast at Antonio’s for lunch.
Ordered Smoked Salmon Eggs Benedict. Yummy!
But when I tasted their Five Cheese Pizza that my friends ordered, I almost lost my head. Goodness, how good it was!!!
Their golden pancake that hubs ordered was delectable as well! Hmmm, looks like we might be dropping by this resto on every Tagaytay trip we’ll be having in the future.
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Had a day off from work today (and Yui from daycare) because Yui and I have fever. We both had a sleepless night but thankfully Yui’s fever finally broke this afternoon and i’m dearly hoping it won’t come back anymore (at least this time. Please fever, don’t come back, ok?). Yui had been very clingy in that she can only sleep if she’s snug against me. Can’t do any household work. But good thing I can blog while sweaty Yui sleeps on my chest. :).
And so with the start of the new year is the hope that I’d be able to update this blog more often; “more often” being at least once a month.
Had our first dine out for the year earlier for dinner at the Glick Grill. Set up is like one of those popular family restaurants here in Japan; only, that this is of high end and of course with more class.
Both hubs and I had the meal with roast chicken, pan-grilled tuna (hiding under the paprika in below photo) and deep-fried marinated shrimp on lemon sauce. I love all three, especially the roasted herbed chicken skin (I rarely eat chicken skin as part of dieting) and the shrimp (which reminded me of the way Papa cooks shrimps – which they had for their Media Noche ~drool~). If given the choice however, I wouldn’t have had added the lemon sauce.
We ordered herbed rice with our main dish. I was just expecting the usual herbed rice but was delightfully surprised with what was served us.
It’s reminiscent of the Singaporean Chicken Rice but made EVEN BETTER because it’s Japanese rice and cooked with herbs. I’m limiting my rice intake to only half a cup once a day but I believe I could easily finish four cups of this one. 😀
Tummy has no more room for dessert so I just ordered cafe mocha. No expectations for this one but yet again I was delighted with what was served.
Thanks for the treat Otoosan! 🙂
I could easily call this Mediterranean restaurant an old favourite. Their menu is one that would make you come back again and again and again. And well, the fact that it’s a place were i’ve had wonderful memories of get togethers with friends add to the place’ charm.
Honestly, I’m craving for Cicada’s dishes today so much so that I asked Hubs we eat there with Okasan next week when she comes to visit us. I-CAN’T-WAIT. For now and the next few days, I’ll just daydream of these:
Grilled flat bread that goes great with salted olive oil. It’s “bottomless” or for okawari at only 500yen (without tax).
They offer a selection of olive oils – Greek, French, Californian, Italian.
For their Tapaz, these are our absolute favourites:
Spicy Moroccan Crab Cakes
Roasted Calamari stuffed with Prosciutto
For the main entree, Pan-roasted scallops with farro and maitake risotto
Drool. Six sleeps away.
I just needed to update this blog once a month but even at that I’ve remiss in updating it. So while we wait for my turn here in the OB (one could now understand why I’ve been pretty neglecting this site the past couple months),I figured it’d be better updating this blog than browsing either Facebook and Twitter.
My last post was back in February. So where were we in March for my goodfoodhunt?
March is a special month for me. It’s my birthday month after all. 🙂 So to celebrate, Hubs and I and a couple of my friends tried one of Ukai’s branches – Azamino Ukai-Tei in Yokohama.
The place was a Dutch guest house in the Meiji era. I just love the house’ charming facade.
It was already a bit late when we settled when to celebrate hence, having had reserved only a week before the supposed lunch, the private rooms weren’t available anymore. Nevertheless, we still had our own chef to grill our food in front of us.
Simple yet elegant setting.
Ukai is famous for their steaks cut from the famous Japanese black cows hence, even when I don’t eat beef, we ordered the Â¥8400yen set course with grilled beef on it. My stomach can’t digest regular beef but it sure can digest those oh-so-tender Japanese beef! 🙂
So, for starters.
I’ve no doubt of the freshness of the fish they serve but as I’m expecting, reading all my pregnancy books and references had me so paranoid on eating raw fish.
So whilst my hubs and friends had raw marinated snapper,
I had grilled sea bass.
Each one of us were quite happy with what was served us.
Next up, king crab soup in milk. So creamy. Yummy.
I’m not sure now what our facial expressions were when we saw what the chef was about to grill. But I’m pretty sure our expectations were quite low.
Young bamboo shoots.
Tada! Young bamboo shoots steamed in sparkling water and soy sauce.
If truth be told, it-was-surprisingly-really-delicious! Tasted like succulent, sweet Japanese sweet corn (yes, the redundancy is required). This is actually our group’s collective favorite – next to the beef which was up next.
Those small slices on the side are actually prized beef fat.
Sans service charge and tax, our course cost 8400yen for each of us. Yet we have to share this slab of beef. That’s-how-expensive-Japanese-beef-is.
My portion.
Who would have thought that the description “melts in your mouth” would ever be connected with beef?! But unanimously, we all agreed that this is so. It was just so good. And by the way, that toasted garlic by the side is the best garlic I’ve ever had.
And I mentioned prized beef fat earlier, right? If the meat earlier was really excellent, I’d say having these few slices sort of made me forget who I was with for a few minutes. There was just my tongue and the beef fat in the whole wide world. Nothing else existed.
We had a Japanese course. So the rice and miso came last. Garlic fried rice (probably the most oil-less fried rice we’ve ever had), side dishes and miso soup.
Lovely miso soup bowl depicting a weeping sakura.
Dessert was served on the second floor for a more relaxed atmosphere.
Over bottomless coffee and tea.
Satiated. Ukai Tei was also very thoughtful in giving me, the birthday celebrant, three red roses. Each one of us also have a commemorative card with our group photo on it, with mine having birthday greetings.
Ah, excellent food, excellent place, excellent service.
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Azamino Ukai Tei
Premium Steaks & Grilled Dishes
Lunch/ ￥6,830･￥8,400
Dinner Course/ ï¿¥10,500 – ï¿¥16,800
6-5-2 Tsukimino, Yamato, Kanagawa
TEL.046(276)5252
http://www.ukai.co.jp/english/yokohama/index.html