Ann Arbor Restaurant Week II

It’s that (second) time of the year again, folks! Ann Arbor’s Restaurant Week just passed by, and when Restaurant Week opens, students (or jobless alumni like me) go flocking!

This time around, I visited Real Seafood Company for lunch and The Earle for dinner. Unfortunately, my (mediocre) photos only came out for RSC since it was too dark in the Earle for me to photograph, especially since I make it a policy to not use my camera’s flash.

NYC Post #2

This post is about the day I spent out with my friend, Man Lee. She basically put up with me for about 6 hours (which ended up with me buying onions) so she could show me downtown/uptown/midtown/everywhere-town Manhattan.

Man Lee, being the observant friend she is, realized that I like food quite a bit. So she arranged for us to stop by Gyu-kaku, a Japanese barbecue grill.

NYC Post 1

And once again, it looked like I dropped everything and dashed off on a whirlwind of activities.

To be honest though, I have no excuse to offer for the past 2 weeks of inactivity, but I do have an excuse for the inactivity before that. And the excuse is that -drumroll- I graduated! I am officially a University of Michigan alumni after 3 years of snow and occasionally some sunshine.

The ceremony was wild because President Obama, yes, that’s right, THE President of the US of A was the Commencement speaker. Regardless of mine, his, and your political views, it was a pretty darn exciting. I was only five rows of chairs away from him and my friend joked about how he could probably spit and sweat on us with a good wind.

And, speaking of wind, the weather that morning was terrible. My parents and friends had fought their way into the Michigan Football Stadium at around 6 in the morning and I had also been at the field at around 6 in the morning–all to get close-up seats. I think everyone thought it was worth it though. After all, how often do you get to see a sitting president up close?

After the graduation ceremony, my parents and I flew to NYC to visit my grandmother. And I think we can all agree that NYC=good food. I hadn’t had such good Chinese food for so long…so this post will be me going on and on about xiao long bao, or the Shanghai-nese soup bun at Joe’s Shanghai, a restaurant in Flushing, and some other random good food that my aunt took us to.

Restaurant Review: Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger

I haven’t had much time or ingredients to cook lately, which is why I’m posting so much about restaurants I went to.

Today we went to Krazy Jim’s Blimpy Burger. I was really craving some greasy diner food lately, so this was our pick!  I was really excited to come here since I was told that it was featured on the Food Network, so I was expecting a very good burger.

I wasn’t disappointed! Blimpy Burger sort of gives off the “hole in the wall” restaurant type of vibe. The price is also pretty reasonable. It was about $5 for a burger with fries.

Restaurant Review: 八太郎 (Hachitarou)

Hi everyone!

Again, it seems like I was swept away by school. It’s been an incredibly crazy past month or so, and I really feel irresponsible when I can’t update as much as I can. I’ve gotten a job recently with the University, so I’m a full time student plus a staff member for the school!

But, because I’m a student, that also means we get…that’s right! Spring Break!

This break couldn’t have come at a better time since I’d been scrambling with papers due the entire week before. For Spring Break, my roommates and some friends of ours took a road trip to Toronto. It’s about a five hour drive from Ann Arbor and pretty much the opposite direction of Chicago. I think in terms of culture…well, in my opinion, there wasn’t much of a difference. Toronto, though, is probably about the food.

So our first stop was at Hachitarou (photo from Yelp by Jennifer K.)

Joy Sushi

My friend and I went out for sushi the other day and, well, it was pretty darn good!

I’ve never done a restaurant review before, but since I haven’t been cooking lately (after another shredded nail), I figured this was a better way to update my blog. : ]

Joy Sushi’s located at the edges of San Mateo’s downtown and is a bit “out there” in terms of restaurants. Less people walk this area compared to the other restaurants, which is a bit of a shame since Joy Sushi has a very unique menu that pays tribute to San Mateo’s features. Despite this though, it seems as if the restaurant has managed to get its name out there to customers since the ground floor was rather occupied and the top floor was about half occupied.

Joy Sushi, obviously, specializes in Japanese food. They have the standard temaki (handrolls), sushi, and bento, but, if you go to this restaurant, it probably should be for their specialty sushi rolls. As I mentioned before, a lot of San Mateo’s local specialties are featured. It was pretty amusing to see a “Caltrain roll” or a “2nd Ave roll” on the menu, and my friend and I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out which was the best to try from the sheer variety offered by the menu. In the end, we managed to settle on three type of sushi.