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When I moved to Northern California for work in the mid nineties, Japanese food was still a novelty for me. My coworkers would never eat Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese or other Asian food, they prefer Japanese food for health reasons. They also eat mostly chicken and turkey as their main protein but that's another story. Eventually I didn't miss Chinese or Vietnamese food anymore, the Japanese food fulfilled my taste buds on the Asian flavors.
These days I eat at two Japanese restaurants weekly: Furusato for traditional at-home dishes and Kazu Izakaya for modern preparations of Asian ingredients.
At Furusato I often make myself a meal out of their appetizers section. They make the best Chicken Kara-Age in Montreal. I also enjoy the simple preparation of grilled mackerel or Oyakodon (chicken and egg over rice). The word 'oyako' means 'mother and child' and is either creepy or poetic when applied to a dish. The only things I miss is the amaebi and fried fish appetizer I enjoyed from Masa's Sushi in Mountain View. I get my fix of amaebi at Zenya on Ste-Catherine St.
At Kazu I like the smaller dishes which also lets me compose my own meal with several choices. I particularly like the shrimp okonomiyaki, a cabbage pancake not found elsewhere in Montreal. Do sit at the bar if you can so you can watch the food being prepared. I've been going to Kazu since their 2nd week of opening so I now know how every dish is prepared. There's only raw salmon and tuna in this restaurant so don't go if you just want sushi.
I decided recently that the only toys and games worth buying now are Lego's. Although I did buy a Transformer toy recently because it was 50% off, I will "invest" in Lego because even if I tire of them from time to time, they are infinitely reusable and compatible.
ps: the nephews in California, can I have my Star Wars Episode 1 Lego sets back ?
I purchased the Lego Universe game recently and although it doesn't have as much content as World of Warcraft, it is very fun and has room for infinite play time with the built-in model designer. As part of your adventures you will collect pre-built models and single bricks. You can use the single bricks to form model parts and then manipulate the parts to form bigger models. The money that you also get from your adventures is not the main currency in this game and I think that's revolutionary for these kind of games.
Last weekend we had Dishcrawl Montreal event #3, the croissantcrawl. As the weather was uncertain we decided to do it indoors and so we had 55 people tasting 9 different types. I'll let other people tell you about it.
Dishcrawl post
@FoodGuyMtl post
I wanted to write about the rest of the week's food experiences while @ladyleet was in town but I'll just summarize it now.
Thursday - Kazu with @ladyleet
Friday - break
Saturday noon - Noodle Factory in chinatown with @ladyleet, @EatalianGirl, and @cgoldwax. We also went to Qing Hua dumplings
Saturday evening - I followed @ladyleet to Restauramt Biron where I met @massaymaha and @calliope27, two gals working in the social media scene at @Telegraphe. It's asian food made by a white guy and there are innovative preparations of the foods I know.
After the visit to l'Atelier, we walked to Macaroni Bar, a spot I would never step into. I would come back however to get a bigger portion of what we tasted, the fried gnocchi poutine. Instead of fries they deep fry gnocchi balls and then serve with a veal demi-glace and cheese curds. It's very rich tasting and very good. It's a bit expensive for a snack after drinking but it's all good. We also had pork meatballs served as lollipops but I didn't like the taste.
The night was officially over and some of us wanted to go to Juliette & Chocolat for dessert but it was already closed (11pm for a Wednesday) so we rushed to Lemeac as their kitchen closed only at midnight. I have never been to Lemeac even though I reserved there many times, thinking it was Laloux. Everytime I get to Laloux I'd have to ask the bartender to call Lemeac and cancel the reservation for me.
I'm told by the person in front of me at the table that everything is good at Lemeac. I had the chocolate tartelette with ginger ice cream which was ok.
