romantical meal

i don't go out to dinner on valentine's day but i do love to go on romantic dinner dates with seth. one of our favorite places is benkay japanese restaurant for romantic dinner for two.

here is what you get:
a choice of one drink, per person, sake or beer or wine
first course: seaweed salad, squid salad, shrimp and vegetable tempura, and tofu and pork gyoza.
main course:
sushi: tuna, Salmon, yellowtail, shrimp, flounder, eel
sashimi: tuna, salmon, yellowtail
Roll: choice of any two rolls from the regular menu

so what this means is you each get a drink, then you eat a beautiful bento box full of delicious appetizers. this is a really exciting part of the meal to me because we don't usually order these as our main focus is maximizing our raw fish pleasure. but I love goyza and tempura.

then comes the plate of maki, sushi, and sashimi. the sushi and sashimi are selected for you but you get to choose your maki and the selection is excellent and some of the choices are fancy $10 rolls. every time we go to benkay we have to order the new york roll with grilled salmon skin, cucumber, scallion, bonito flakes, radish sprouts. this is the best salmon skin i have ever had with crispy crackly skin and amazing smoky flavor.

the fish is very fresh and the slices of sashimi sit on the plate like little jewels, waiting for me to scoop them up with my chopsticks, dredge them in a slurry of soy sauce and wasabi, and plop them in my mouth.

the thing that really makes this a romantic dinner for two is the price. all this for $70! and for those of you out there who do go out to dinner for valentine's day, you can get it all for $60! go to benkay's website and print out the coupon and get $10 off from february 8th to 14th.

normally benkay is one of those great restaurants that always has a table open, but for valentine's day you will likely need reservations.
other spots we find to be romantical are salt exchange and bar of chocolate.

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.