Food Catchup: Yayoi's Beef Sukiyaki and Cafe Venetia's Chocolate Cake
The other weekend, dracosphynx mentioned wanting to go to an interesting Japanese restaurant up in my area. Not having gotten out in a while, I importuned him to let me come along, and he was kind enough to oblige. So...
Here's Yayoi's dining room! You can see tablets by each table. These are how you order your food. No, I'm not making this up. You enter your orders on the tablet and a waiter brings you the food. They give you menus too, to peruse, but if you want to have Japanese food without ever talking to someone, this is the place.
This is beef sukiyaki, served 'teishoku' style -- "a very simple yet well-balanced set meal which is served on a tray with a combination of steamed rice, miso soup, a main dish of your choice, vegetables and pickles."
Those are thick udon-style noodles on the left side of the big bowl, beef sukiyaki (sweet and savory) on the right side, some veggies and such mixed in. Top right and going clockwise, there's a bowl with some astringent greens, an empty dish for mixing ingredients in as you prefer, miso soup, a small amount of pickled veggies, a 'soft-boiled egg', and a bowl of rice, brown rice that has been milled "kinme-mai" style, removing the somewhat tough outer husk.
It was great! I tried everything in different combinations with each other. Both the bitter greens and the picked greens were good with the noodles and beef, and dipping the beef in the yolk (ignore the egg whites) was quite sumptuous. I found the rice more or less ignorable since the noodles provided plenty of carbs already, but that would probably change with some of their other dishes.
Definitely a place I'd like to come back to, I'd want to try some of their other dishes.
We walked around a bit to digest, then hit up Cafe Venetia down the block. This cake?... More chocolate bar than cake, really. A little too heavy for me; I had been hoping for something light and fluffy. dracosphynx had a 'hot chocolate' that looked much closer to chocolate pudding than something one would drink.
Interestingly, both restaurants had a no-tipping policy-- they claimed they paid their employees up front to avoid the necessity.
Here's Yayoi's dining room! You can see tablets by each table. These are how you order your food. No, I'm not making this up. You enter your orders on the tablet and a waiter brings you the food. They give you menus too, to peruse, but if you want to have Japanese food without ever talking to someone, this is the place.
This is beef sukiyaki, served 'teishoku' style -- "a very simple yet well-balanced set meal which is served on a tray with a combination of steamed rice, miso soup, a main dish of your choice, vegetables and pickles."
Those are thick udon-style noodles on the left side of the big bowl, beef sukiyaki (sweet and savory) on the right side, some veggies and such mixed in. Top right and going clockwise, there's a bowl with some astringent greens, an empty dish for mixing ingredients in as you prefer, miso soup, a small amount of pickled veggies, a 'soft-boiled egg', and a bowl of rice, brown rice that has been milled "kinme-mai" style, removing the somewhat tough outer husk.
It was great! I tried everything in different combinations with each other. Both the bitter greens and the picked greens were good with the noodles and beef, and dipping the beef in the yolk (ignore the egg whites) was quite sumptuous. I found the rice more or less ignorable since the noodles provided plenty of carbs already, but that would probably change with some of their other dishes.
Definitely a place I'd like to come back to, I'd want to try some of their other dishes.
We walked around a bit to digest, then hit up Cafe Venetia down the block. This cake?... More chocolate bar than cake, really. A little too heavy for me; I had been hoping for something light and fluffy. dracosphynx had a 'hot chocolate' that looked much closer to chocolate pudding than something one would drink.
Interestingly, both restaurants had a no-tipping policy-- they claimed they paid their employees up front to avoid the necessity.