oh my miyake!

all i can say is oh my god. this meal was unbelievable. like i said last post, we went really early for dinner in fear of having to wait. we were the first people in the restaurant, which is not our usual style but i like to think we got a little extra special service.
after running next door to the west end deli (133 spring st.) to pick out a bottle from their extensive saki selection (miyake is byob), seth and i decided to partake in the tasting menu #2, putting our dish choices in the hands of the chef. this was a fantastically brilliant choice as our five course japanese meal was something to remember.
it started out with a plate of sashimi containing about eight varieties of the freshest fish. i don't eat uni often but it was WOW! our second course was a northern new england welk. i was so excited because andrew zimern ate welk on last week's maine bizarre foods and i really wanted to try some. it was slow cooked and tender, served cut into bit sized bits in a tastey butter mixture right inside its own shell. third course was braised pork belly. do i need to say more! quickly dipped in soy sauce and spicy mustard it was a party in my mouth. fourth course was soy marinated black cod. yum yum yummy! finally we were served an amazing maki with two types of toro. we finished the meal with a green tea tirimisu and hurried home in the very cold night. yes people, this place is walking distance from my house.
two hours after the start of our meal we left the tiny restaurant. and while it was much busier than when we arrived, we could have still found a spot for the two of us.

exhausted and hungry

so i started my new job this past week and while i am exhausted from using my brain so very much, it was a great week. its quite strange to call myself nurse practitioner. very strange, in fact. but i love it.
my new job is not exactly the setting i imagined myself in when i was in nursing school and all of my clinical placements were in community health centers in ghettos. that's kind of where i thought i would end up. but finding that job in maine proved difficult. finding any job in maine proved difficult. that's why i am commuting one hour each way to work in new hampshire in a private family practice in an affluent community.
but enough about work. after only one week i don't have much to say except that i have a lot to learn.
as a treat to finally finding and starting a job, seth and i are finally going to indulge our sushi craving. portland has an abundance of sushi restaurant and we love sushi. but being so broke we just havn't been able to rationalize a sushi dinner. we knew that once we could, we would be going to food factory miyake (129 Spring St), at the recommendation of our friends otis and marya. so monday we both started dreaming about our soon to come sushi heaven on saturday night.
we were also anticipating the maine episode of bizarre foods with andrew zimmern. mostly we were watching because he attends the bizarre food death match and otis and marya were there and we wanted to get a peek of them in the back ground. but he also goes to miyake! it is already a very popular and tiny restaurant that is hard to get a table in, and now this! not to mention, it makes us look like johnny-come-latelys. anyway, we are headed over there very early this evening so we don't have to wait. i will write tomorrow about the experience.