So.
Mark's birthday is 1st July, but we went out for dinner tonight with him. We went to a place in Toronto called Aki Da and consumed some fantastic Japanese food. In fact, I would say that it was possibly the finest Japanese food I have ever consumed; I ordered the Omakaze, which is apparently Japanese for "Let the Chef get you whatever he feels like" and I do not regret it one bit. Miso and salad came with each meal, and they were fairly standard Sushi-joint fare, our apps were Edamame, Gyoza and Beef and Enoki Mushroom rolls, and then came the meal; Course the first (!) for me was a mix of pickled seaweed, sweet shrimps, pickled codfish, pickled baby octopus, octopus tentacles, sweet shrimps and shrimp heads. Delicious. Course the second involved a half-dozen oysters with lemon and optional Tobasco sauce. Emily, Mark and I split those. Plate the third was the finest thing I have ever eaten; two pieces of salmon sashimi, each about a centimetre and a half thick, a rosette of mackerel filled with roe, a fillet of seared swordfish and four pieces of uni - sea urchin roe. Everything was delicious, the oysters were fantastic, but the uni was...oh, man. It was like eating sweet, buttery, jellied seawater. It was fantastic.