Ginza

It's been a busy week. Yes, we have been cooking and eating, but much of it has been old standbys. Jennifer made a scampi that was terrific, and I made a yummy tortilla soup. Both are so great we'll definitely make them again and I'll write about those again.

Jennifer and I attended a Pink Martini concert at the Opera House last night. Music for the discriminating, I'm tellin' you. They've got that classic 20's-30's style with a bit of kitchy 60s B-movie sound all wrapped up in some great international beats. The concert was absolutely fabulous. They were on stage a full 2.5 hours. And by the time we got out onto the street, we were starving.

Being so close to - actually in - Chinatown, we decided to grab a quick sushi snack, so we headed to Ginza. The sushi chefs were still going at it behind the counter close to 11, and other folks had had the same idea as us. I'm not very knowledgeable about "sushi" and all it's incarnations. But I do know I like the little bits rolled up in rice. And I guess that's called maki. My usual order is the spicy tuna maki. The waitress did the up-sell on us and we got something similar to the spicy tuna with a tempura something inside for what we learned was an additional $5. Tasty, but I would have stuck with the spicy tuna. Jennifer ordered a bowl of soup. I was a bit put off by the clam floating in broth, but the broth was very flavorful. We also ordered our standby seaweed salad and avocado salad. The presentation for the latter was really nice - it was formed to actually look like an avocado. And it's always a favorite item for us. We also ordered the caterpillar maki, which was formed to look like a creepy crawler. Nice flavor, but the rice was a bit dry. Oh, and stay away from the soy sauce on the table. It's way way too salty.

The best thing was the speed of the service. Being so late, customers don't want to spend time waiting for food or the check. We were out of there in 20 min. Good meal, not the best sushi I've ever had, but a nice way to top off an evening.