The beginnings of restaurant reviews...

After receiving the FABULOUS news the other day of the upcoming (ok fine, not upcoming, I'm talking Thanksgiving here) visit from K-Jo and the (ex)-roomie, I realized I needed to step up the restaurant investigation.  My goal is to have a top-restaurant list, of both Nagoya and specifically around my area, for them by the time they arrive.  So, here's a few of my first finds:

Din Tai Fung:  I know I shouldn't repeat restaurants with the limited time I have here, but Din Tai Fung is worth being a repeat offender.  We tried this place first during our house hunting trip due to convenience (its located in Nagoya station, where our hotel was), and I couldn't stop talking about it since.  In 1993, the New York Times ranked this Taiwanese restaurant as one of the top 10 restaurants in the world, yes WORLD.  Now granted its been 17 years since then, but good things rarely change...

I've had dreams of their shoronpou (soup dumplings)...

Dekitateno Roll Cake:  I think the hubs may think part of the reason why I chose the house we're living in right now was for the proximity to this place.  A store dedicated to just one single product?  It *must* be good!

We *finally* had the opportunity to make our way to the store the other day to purchase our very first roll cake - Green tea roll cake, to be exact.  As we made our 0.1 mile walk home, I was full of anticipation, and maybe some drooling was involved too.  The roll cake did NOT disappoint.  They got it down perfectly - the fluffy green tea infused cake portion was made to just right in the moistness and sweetness, and the cream was on par - as if it were literally just made :)  I was in heaven!

Kaoru:  A 0.1 mile the other direction from our place is where we found this organic restaurant.  Ok fine, I can't take the credit for finding this gem.  Our coworker had befriended the owner and recommended this place to us.  Its a mixture of traditional Japanese food w/ a home cooked feel.  Since I'm still learning the ways of ordering traditional Japanese food (lots of little dishes, almost like tapas, to begin with), I chickened out and went w/ their "daily special" - grilled mackerel w/ miso, rice, and traditional sides.   All was great, and for those who love sho-chu, they had an amazing selection of homemade sho-chu.  And randomly, a good selection of Belgian beer too, I might add!  I was a little nervous w/ the whole eating situation, so I was only able to get a snapshot of the restaurant name w/ my iPhone, whoopsie:

And today, since it was "leave work early" day, we got home just before 8pm, the earliest yet!  So we decided to venture on over to our neighborhood bar/restaurant, Homare, instead of our usual convenient store pre-packaged dinners.  What.

We started off w/ an order of pieces of just-raw-enough beef w/ a sweet almost teriyaki-like sauce drizzled on top.  With the mixed greenery atop each piece of meat, each bite was a perfect combo of sweet and bitter.  Next, we were served tender, juicy chicken pieces which were covered with daikon and yuzu, two Japanese vege/fruit getting a lot of attention recently in the States, and definitely two of my fav "toppings!"     And finally, we wrapped up our dinner w/ a fried rice dish - w/ bacon and filled w/ vegetables, oh my! 

Although the above dishes were quite good, my fav was definitely the dessert - house made Japanese pudding (if you havent had Japan's version of pudding before, you're missing out!), topped w/ a scoop of green tea ice cream, then drizzled w/ some black honey.  Come to mama!!

To be continued...