I was too tired to cook today, so I called up Zach to see if he wanted to go to Sichuanese Cuisine. Once we got there, we debated ordering the hot-pot, but in the end ordered Dried-Cooked Chicken and Chinese Stir-Fried Greens, which we had the last time we were here. The chicken, as usual, was so good it made me want to cry. Crisp, yet tender and wonderfully flavored with fermented black beans. The greens were also delicious—buttery and garlicky, ladled with a rich broth.

We tried two new things as well, the Eggplant with Pork and Ants on a Tree. The eggplant was a shockingly gorgeous, shimmering purple. It wasn’t quite what we were expecting (the “pork” in this dish was microscopic), but the eggplant was great—cooked until it had a creamy consistency, with a prominent eggplant flavor laced with a slightly spicy chili sauce.

The ants on a tree, on the other hand, tasted like… uh, nothing. It looked like it would be good, with a bright red chili sauce soaking into the translucent glass noodles. The “ant” portion of this dish was supposed to be pork, but we couldn’t see any. I thought maybe they hid it somewhere under the noodles, so I lifted them up, but found nothing. We won’t be ordering this dish again, but we’ll be back as often as possible for the Dried-Cooked Chicken and the Chinese Stir-Fried Greens.

For Zach’s birthday, I took him to Restaurant Zoe for the 25 for $25 deal. As I’ve said before, this rarely turns out to be that good of a deal because inevitably you order drinks and other things off the menu. But tonight, we were in the mood to splurge.

We started out with two fantastic drinks, the Private Danska for me and the Amalfi for Zach. As I’m writing this (two weeks later), I can’t for the life of me remember exactly what was in them. I think mine was made with Grapefruit Danska Vodka and Zach’s was made with Brandy? Maybe. Anyway, they were both really good.

We were torn about ordering off the regular menu because everything sounded delicious. As a compromise we chose from the 25 for $25 menu, but also ordered the Foie Gras ($15) with two glasses of Sauternes ($9 each) off the main menu.

The foie gras was meltingly tender and came with a sweet and tart caramelized mango sauce—kind of like a mango marmalade. It was incredibly delicious, especially with the Sauternes, but I thought it was served a little cold and wished it had come to the table piping hot.

Our first course choices were the Salad of Young Mixed Greens and the Pork Confit with Black Lentil Salad. The mixed green salad was nicely dressed, but it couldn’t compare to the pork confit. There were only a few small chunks of the flavorful confit in the pork dish, but the lentils were delicious. I always have lentils when I’m at Restaurant Zoe because they know how to prepare them right; tender, with just a hint of crunch and deeply flavored by their cooking liquid.

Zach’s main course was the Pan Roasted Pork Tenderloin. It was perfectly cooked, but mild tasting when eaten alone. It came with a great with garnish of sweet currants and salty olives. Our only issue with Zach’s dish was that you had to work to get a perfect bite—a bite with just the right ratio of pork, sauce, currants and olives.

My main course was the Roasted Young Chicken. Sounds boring, right? It came with two perfectly cooked pieces of chicken stacked on top of each other, one white meat and one dark. The chicken was extremely juicy on the inside and crisp, crisp, crisp on the outside. It was great alone, but heavenly when paired with the amazing sauce (probably a veal reduction) and creamy, truffled potatoes.

I was positively stuffed after our entrees, but we still had dessert coming. Zach had the Pot de Chocolate, which we enjoyed but I can’t remember what it tasted like now. I had the Molten Cake, which was delicious and similar to the one I make.

As an extra birthday present I spared Zach the obnoxious flash and waiting-to-take-the-perfect-picture-while-your-food-gets-cold, but everything was beautifully presented. Dinner came to $100 with tip, which was considerably more than the $50 we were intending to spend, but for the quality and enjoyment of the meal we thought it was still a great deal.

A while back, I read Jon’s review of the Renkon Butter at Maekawa and it has stuck with me. So when Cindy from Food Migration said she’d be in town and wanted to meet, I suggested we try Maekawa Bar.

The restaurant is on the second floor of a very unassuming building. It was much smaller than I expected, but it wasn’t too crowded so we got a table right away. There were four of us and we all took turns ordering, but mostly followed the suggestions laid out by Jon. This is what we ate:

Takoyaki (octopus donuts) – This is one of Zach’s favorite things, but I find that they never taste fully cooked and have a wet batter texture that I dislike.

Renkon Butter (lotus root with butter and bonito) – This was my favorite dish, but mostly because it tasted like fried butter. The texture was odd and spongy, but I didn’t mind it.

Chinese Fried Chicken – This was bad. There was hardly any flavor and the chicken was so dried out that it was like chicken jerky.

Eel Tempura – I liked this dish when I ate it, but the more I think about it the more I think that the eel would have been better without the tempura. It masked the flavor too much.

Butasyabu (shabu shabu pork) – This seemed boring. Just thin slices of cooked pork that you dipped into a sauce. I could be jaded though… I wanted it to taste like hot-pot.

Greens wrapped in beef – I don’t know what these were called on the menu, but it doesn’t much matter because I won’t be ordering them again. They were okay, but again, way too chewy.

Chicken Croquette – We ordered this on the recommendation of the waitress because she didn’t think we had enough food for four people (we did). It was good, but too rich. It was a deep-fried egg about the size of my fist that was STUFFED with oozing, garlic cheese sauce.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed with the food—especially when the bill came to almost $70 with tip (and sake). But it may have been an off night in the kitchen. Or I could have built it up in my head too much. Either way, I still had a great time and was happy to have met Cindy. She’s an absolute riot. Somehow we got on the topics of eggs and I was telling her that both Zach and I recently discovered that we have a similar egg phobia; I’ve always been freaked out that one day I’ll crack open an egg and there will be a little dead chicken inside. So every time I’m cracking an eggshell and it meets a little resistance, I get squeamish.

Cindy gleefully added fuel to our phobias by telling us about Balut. I won’t go into detail here, but you can learn about Balut here:
http://www.asiacuisine.com.sg/Nacws/1998/9/314/

If you’re REALLY brave, here’s a close-up. Enjoy!