Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Rikyu

Our friend Dawn was in town from Boston, so we seized this opportunity to make her eat with us. While on our review of Garibaldi's we noticed we had skipped Rikyu, which technically should have come before Marzano in our tour. (And no, we are not going to eat at Marzano and Garibladi's again before continuing on.)

Rikyu has a nice intimate feel with a really friendly wait staff, but we gotta admit it is pretty pricey.





We started with some edamame. It was totally edable.


















The gyoza were actually a little unusual. The dough was very thin and light with yummy crispy stuff on the bottom. The pork seemed to have more interesting seasoning that most gyoza stuffing and had a great smokey flavor to it.









Our other dishes included (clockwise from top left):
-Spicy Salmon Roll. Good but not particularly spicy or exciting. It was, however, rolled.

-Spider Roll. YUM. But the giantness made it hard to cram in your mouth all in one bite*. People with small mouths: watch out.

-Tori Karaage. (fried chicken with lemon wedge). Totally awesome.

-Rikyu Roll. The house specialty. Includes "Battered roll, spicy tuna, shiso, avocado, and fish". Despite containing both spicy tuna and "fish", it did not taste very much like fish at all. It mostly just tasted like deep fried batter, mayonnaise, and hot sauce.

*that's what she said.

Rikyu gets 2.5 Sabuys. It just wasn't amazing enough to warrant it being so expensive. If Rikyu were a little less costly, we would probably eat there again, but as it is we probably won't.









Here are some more pictures!
Rikyu Buddies.


SakeDawn!

Good night, Rikyu.

Next stop: The Burrito Shop!

Monday, January 11, 2010

Garibaldi's

We kinda screwed this one up. We forgot to take a menu. We forgot to take a picture of the outside of the restaurant... again. And as we were walking up to Garibaldi's we realized that we forgot to eat at Rikyu, a Japanese restaurant across the street which we somehow failed to notice completely. We'll be going there next.

Anyway, back to Garabaldi's.

They brought out two kinds of bread with butter and salt, but neither of the breads were particularly awesome. Not bad, just not as good as the bread and butter at a lot of other fancy restaurants.
















We ordered these fries because they are served with the same "tomato jam" that we had on the arancini at Marzano, but somehow it wasn't as good this time. Maybe it was just an off night, or maybe it just went better with the arancini. The garlic aioli, and the fries themselves were both worth ordering.


As a side note, we remember it saying "shoestring fries" on the menu. How are you gonna lace up your potato shoes with fries this thick?






This charming couple was sitting at a table near us.












Steve got Chicken a la Milanesa with a lemon caper sauce served with mashed potatoes and greens. It was all well made, but nothing really stood out, which brings us to Briana's steak....














The steak was HUGE and AMAZING! It was covered in a crimini mushroom and BACON sauce. The steak was nicely cooked (medium rare) with a great crust of crispiness on the outside, but the inside still pink and tender. Underneath that layer was a perfectly grilled head of radicchio and some potato medallions.







Dessert. Off the hook. It was layered from the top down with:
-Toffee brittle with pine nuts
-Balsamic vinegar foam (What?!)
-Yogurt parfait
-FRIED cubes of white cake
-Maple custard

The presentation was great, but as the waitress suggested you really had to get a tiny bit of each part in every bite and this narrow glass made this difficult. When you DID get every flavor on your spoon it was a crazy combination of flavors that somehow seemed meant to be together.







We would like to give them 4 Sabuys because the food was for the most part very interesting and tasty, but it was not quite as good as Marzano AND more expensive. We have to give Garibaldi's 3.5 Sabuys out of 5.







Next stop, Rikyu.