Food that makes me cry? O Ya!

Howdy, folks. Still checking in on me? Well, that’s good. There’s been plenty of times, lately, that I’ve thought, "That was good. I should include that on my blog," but simply being too busy slows me down in posting. I’ll try to get back to regular updates. 

So, what brought me back from semi-retirement? Good food, of course! As a Christmas present, the Other Half took me and the Otter to dinner at a restaurant called O Ya. This place has been getting crazy good reviews…it’s even been called the Best Restaurant in America by one reviewer. With a place like that in our back yard, of course the Bear Squad had to investigate!

This place embodies the phrase "hole in the wall." It would’ve been very easy to walk right by it. Inside, the lighting was low, but not so low that you couldn’t appreciate the food. It’s tiny, too - only about 9 2-person tables that can be reconfigured for larger groups and space for maybe 18 more people at the Chef’s Counter. We had the corner seats at the Chef’s Counter, which was cool, because we could see the sushi and sashimi chefs doing their cutting and making. We could even peek back into the open kitchen beyond.
 
The building is in the old leather district, near Boston’s Chinatown. That means that it’s most likely a reclaimed factory, complete with huge beams, brickwork, big windows and such. Everyone had some nicely made dark wood chopsticks and a fork and knife. Everyone also had a unique chopstick holder….wood, metal, shell, blue china plate…lots of materials. And all the plates the food was served on were different, meant to aesthetically compliment the dish. A lot of nice attention to the look and presentation of the food. Like most omakases I’ve enjoyed, the waiter explained each dish as it came out. Which was good, because otherwise, we’d have been lost in the eight million dishes. I carried my handy pocket digital recorder and made commentary on each dish.
 
It took little effort to decide what to have. I love saying the word "omakase" to a waiter at a Japanese restaurant. It means that it’s Chef’s Choice – hit us with your best shot. The only things we wanted to be sure we got were their clam chowder, which sounded amazing, and their foie gras sushi, which everyone raves about. After being assured we’d have those, the Other Half and the Otter also asked if they could offer a sake and wine pairing. Since the owner’s wife is the sommelier, we weren’t surprised that they said yes.
 
Some quick definitions before we go on, in case you’re easily confused by types of sushi. This, at least, is my understanding of these terms. Sushi refers to a mound of vinegared rice, generally topped with meats, fish, or vegetables. Sashimi refers to raw fish with or without the rice, which can be pretty amazing on its own. Nigiri refers to hand-crafted sushi…pretty much a little mound of sushi with a piece of something on top of it. All of O Ya’s appetizers are referred to as being nigiri or sashimi. I’ll try to be clear about those as we go.
 
Our first dish was a sashimi of Kumamoto oyster, served with a cucumber mignonette and watermelon pearls. It was very pretty, served in the shell with the other components over it. It was very nice, with a bit of sweetness from the watermelon and cucumber and a hint of soy. This was followed quickly by a sashimi of hamachi (yellowtail), a fish that I’ve gotten very fond of, thanks to Japanese cuisine (Don’t even get me started on the hamachi at Morimoto.) This was excellent, served with a spicy banana pepper mousse on top that gave it some bite. It was lightly blow-torch seared, which gave it a smoky flavor, and the mousse on top was very airy and pleasant. The overall flavor was great! The Otter said that this was another of the dishes people had been raving about online.
 
Our next dish was a nigiri of salmon, served with blow-torched tomato, an onion aioli, and smoke salt. Now, I’ve mentioned my lack of love for salmon before, but, like at Radius, this was a very nice piece of fish…not fishy at all. The tomato added a kind of smoky and fruity touch to it, and the onion just made it taste very fresh.
 
After this came a nigiri of "warm eel". This was served with a kabayaki (sweet soy sauce), Thai basil, and fresh hot pepper. The Other Half thought it was fantastic, and we agreed. It had just been cooked along the outside, giving it a bit of crispiness, and it was sweet and a bit spicy. I love Thai basil, so this helped me enjoy this dish, whereas I’m not generally much of a big eel fan.
 
The next dish was a bit of whimsy…a homemade potato chip nigiri. It had a nice crispy potato chip on it with some micro-greens, with an aioli of onion and black truffle. It was fun and had flavors of citrus and a tangy mayo, but the truffle sort of overwhelmed the rest of the flavors. We enjoyed it while watching them blowtorch other pieces of fish.
 
This was quickly followed by bluefin tuna, served nigiri-style with microgreens and citrus zest. There was also soy-braised garlic which gave it a wonderful flavor, and the rich almost purple color of the tuna was just lovely. That was my and the Otter’s favorite dish to that point, although the Other Half was still fond of the eel.
 
Because one Kumamoto oyster per dinner was simply not enough, we were now served a fried Kumamoto oyster. This had an aioli with yuzu, an Asian citrus, and a foam of squid ink bubbles. It was technically a nigiri, as it was served atop a little tower of rice. We all agreed that that was now the best thing we’d been served so far. The batter was light and crunchy…it had sweetness and citrus flavor from the yuzu…a really lovely dish, honestly.

We then moved on to a nigiri of wild bluefin toro (one of the nicest and fattiest cuts of tuna). This was blowtorched and served with a spicy mayo sauce and sesame seeds. The Other Half almost literally licked the plate.

Around this time, I pondered on the eclectic music. When we entered, it was French ballads. It then meandered through reggae and settled firmly on American 50s standards like Rock Around the Clock. Very amusing.

We were then served Scottish salmon sashimi. It was prepared with a spicy sauce of sesame and yuzu flavors, as well as scallion oil, cucumber, and microgreens. This was a beautiful, brilliantly colored piece of fish. It was tasty...but not a knockout.

The next dish was hamachi sashimi...I believe I've commented on my love of hamachi. This one had what they called a viet mignonette...a very nice chili-oil sauce with Asian flavors, I call it. It also had Thai basil (yum), and crispy-fried shallots (also yum.) This was a wonderful dish...great textures with the crispy shallots, and great pop and sizzle from the spiciness. The Otter called it, "like eating fireworks", but he had been drinking an awful lot of sake and wine by this time.

The wild bluefin otoro came out next...another wonderfully fatty piece of fish. Wasabi oil gave it a nice kick, and the green onions gave it a sharp, fresh flavor. With a piece of fish this fatty (pretty much a fish made of butter at this point), the fresh taste of the onions was wonderful for cutting through the heavily fatty flavor.

A wild bluefin tutna tataki came out next. Tataki is a kind of sushi that it pounded very thin. This was was served with pickled onions that had been blowtorched and truffle oil. It was a very nice piece of fish, but the Other Half felt that the truffle oil overwhelmed the dish. I felt that, in combination with the pickled onions, it just added to the savory nature of the dish.

Is it scary to think we still hadn't made it to the main dishes yet?

We next received one of our only disappointments of the evening. We received a bowl of clam chowder, which many people had raved about. It was served with pork cracklings, a pork fat drizzle, crunchy bits of tempura flakes. This was a nice take on a classic dish, but it was really nothing special, especially in comparison to the way people had been raving about it.

On the plus side, we were also served a grilled "sashimi" of chanterelle and shitake mushrooms. This is served with rosemary garlic oil, a froth of sesame, and a homemade soy sauce. Hoo boy! This was absolutely amazing. The mushrooms were grilled to perfection and incredibly meaty. I could've been convinced I was eating pork, honestly. With the Otter being a vegetarian, it was nice having one purely vegetarian dish that wowed beyond all expectation.

But then...the Otter slipped off the wagon (as he sometimes does). We were served a fabulous petit strip loin of seared Wagyu beef. This was served with a smoked potato that was so cute and little I didn't realize what it was at first, grilled onions, and freshly grated wasabi. This was one of those dishes you have...when I ate at Morimoto for the first time, I discovered that his cooking could actually make me feel emotional. No joke, friends...your humble bear narrator had to wipe away a tear for Morimoto's cooking. Well...here I was again, enraptured and feeling emotional...like I was eating a moving poem.

Now, I've had American Kobe beef...it's some mighty fine beef, I must say. But now prepared to say that Wagyu beef beats it up and takes its lunch money. The beef was melt-in-your-mouth tender, smooth and fatty. It was well-seasoned and extraordinary. The Other Half and I were waxing rhapsodic to such a degree that the Otter couldn't help himself. He asked for a small bite, which he had to admit was wonderful. The onion was sweet and caramelized...the smoky flavor of the potato was a surprise and so lovely. It gave the Other Half what we call a Ratatouille moment, where the flavor brought back a fond memory of his childhood. Really quite wonderful.

And that wasn't even the high point of the meal! Next came the restaurant's signature dish – a sushi nigiri of foie gras. This delicate, seared bit of beauty was served with a balsamic chocolate kabayaki and raisin coconut pulp. On the side, there was a flute glass with a sip of aged sake. The Otter again fell off the wagon and tasted this.

Putting this in my mouth made we want to cry even more. It just melted away, leaving nothing but love behind. It was the Otter's first foie gras, and I'm afraid it spoiled foie gras for him. It had a slight sweetness because of some of the component, but it was mostly buttery and delicate. The sake with it could be described as "sake port"...sweet and mellow, and a perfect compliment to the dish. Drinking the sake while the flavor of the foie gras was still in my mouth brought out such exquisite new levels of flavor...I'm not exaggerating when I say that this may be the best single piece of food I have even eaten in my entire life. Coupled with the Wagyu beef, this dish put this restaurant up in my top three, along with Radius and Morimoto.

To finish our meals, we ordered three different desserts to share. Having a great love of salt caramel, I was delighted to see a raw chocolate gelato served with sea salt caramel mousse and toasted sesame. The Other Half ordered a warm chocolate pudding cake, served with shiso cherries and créme fraiche. The Otter ordered a tres leches soaked Boston cream pie. All three were really delightful desserts.

With no hesitation, I recommend this restaurant. If you're going to be in the Boston area, and you want to find a really nice place to dine, make a reservation and plunge right in. This place is a treasure, and I am sure it will be a "special occassion" restaurant for us for years to come.

Well, we're leaving tomorrow for Walt Disney World...one of my favorite places to go for fun and great food. I have a renewed desire to get blogging, so expect mroe reports, soon.

- The Happy Bear

The Rest of FurFright

So, normally, the Bear Squad is not a breakfast crowd, so we passed on breakfast, our plans for a lunch at Singo Sushi, which we had enjoyed immensely the year before.

Alas, the best laid plans of bears and mice...

We ended up gathering quite a large crowd to go for food. This is a somewhat natural thing, as furry cons tend to involve people you haven't seen for a while. So, our friends from New York wanted to get lunch, and a friend from New Jersey wanted to get lunch, and everyone invited friends, and...

Well, Singo Sushi wasn't able to accomodate our group of 11 immediately when we called them, but they promised us a spot about an hour later, at 2 PM. So we sort of dithered, then got there, slowly accumulated into a group, and...

And nothing. At 2 PM, Singo admitted that it would be another hour. Since none of us had eaten, we decided to forgo their sushi for the day, though we vowed to try and make it back later.

Instead, we ended up at the Manor Inn. This is a nice, somewhat divey little pub with a menu largely devoted to Italian food. The food was decent, not spectacular. A literal "nothing to write home about" sort of place, although I'll admit that the veal dish I had was pretty enjoyable. Even the odd little politcal conversation we had with our server was kind of interesting. Maybe I'm giving Manor Inn a bum rap...but, y'know, it was no Singo Sushi in terms of food quality.

After that, we cruised back to the hotel, butn ot before stopping at Rogers' Orchard. This place is really charming...they have cider served on a honro system...which I honorably paid to drink, while watching their huge rabbits cavort in their cage. They also had homemade fudge, awesome produce, and some of the tastiest cider donuts I've had in a long time. The Other Half was not impressed with their caramel apples, however, and this evolved into a coversation about the goodness, or lack thereof, of jimmies/sprinkles. Oh, well. Can't win 'em all.

Back at theh otel, we quickly changed and headed to the CoCoKey Water Park. The price for this attraction is a little steep...our con had whittled the price to $25.00 per person, and even that was pushing it. They do have 2 totally enclosed tube slides in the dark and a body slide...but that's about it for adult fare. There's also a large water playground for the kids, and there's a lazy river tube area. We ended up spending a large amount of time racing each other around this river. The other attraction we really wanted to use...an indoor/outdoor hot tub, was closed. We were promised it would be open later, so, after we had our fill, we decided to check back later as our tickets were for all day.

After drying off, we sort of flopped around the hotel room, eating the food we'd brought back from the Orchard. This more or less led to none of us wanting dinner, but it did ultimately make us want to swim more. We also snuck some Rock Band II in there, somewhere. Great game. I love wailing out some vocals while the others play the instruments, and I got several compliments on my singing, which was kind. Thank you, whoever you were.

We swam in the hotel pool, because we found out the hot tub was still closed, but I avoided the hotel hot tub, especially after several of our friends who didn't avoid it quickly ran off to take showers to wash off the protein foam that the previous guests had left in it. Very nasty. At the end of the day, we played a bit more Rock Band, then settled in to play a boardgame...the old Dungeon boardgame from the 80s.

The next morning, there was more Rock Band, and we introduced our New York friends to it. We soon realized that a lack of food the previous night had made us hungry. We decided to go out for an earlyish lunch, and the Other Half suggested we try to seek out the Turkish restaurant we had spotted from the highway on the way to the hotel on Friday. There ended up being only 7 of us, and the restaurant in question, Anatolia, was mostly empty.

Let me tell you friends, this was an excellent choice. Easily the best meal of the weekend, and maybe the best food I'd eaten in months.

For appetizers, we had hummus, baba ganoush, red lentil soup, and a host of other little salads and nibbles. We also had some hot appetizers, and we split them all up between the seven of us, so it wasn't *too* much food. Our main courses were various kebabs, from tradition lamb and chicken to swordfish! All of the meat I had was well-seasoned and tender, and it sat on a bed of well-seasoned rice pilaf.

For dessets, we said, what the heck, bring us one of each and plenty of Turkish coffee. The two standout desserts were definitely the baklava and the milk pudding. Both spectacular desserts.

Back at the con, we tried a board game with our friends called Touch of Evil. I highly recommend the game. We played the cooperative mode, which really helped us feel like we were banding together to fight a vampire. We were constantly aiding each other with cards and sort of "role playing" our way through the story. When we finally launched our climactic battle against the Vampire, it was gruelling, but we were victorious.

Finally, it was time to say goodbye. I left some business cards for the Happy Bear's Guide in a public spot, and the Bear Squad headed home, already looking forward to the following year.

Oh, yeah...and we stopped for McDonalds sweet teas on the way home. ;)

- The Happy Bear

The Nutty Flavor of Success

Well, I was among those who raised an eyebrow before it opened, but now I'm a believer. Snappy Sushi in Boston and Somerville is almost always packed. Why the eyebrow raising, H.B.? I hear you saying. Well, as they note, they make all of their sushi with brown rice.

The brown rice actually adds a slight nutty taste to all of their excellent sushi, and I have to say that their fish buyer must get up crazy early in the morning. He beats the other urban bears to the freshest fish. Suits me fine. I'd rather have my fish prepared and tasty with rice, even if it is still raw.

When you walk into the Somerville location, prepare to be underwhelmed by the seating arrangements. There's a traditional sushi bar, but all the other seating (for, oh, let's say about 12-15 people) is around one large table. Why? Well, in Davis Square, parking is at a premium, and if you have multiple tables, you need to provide a certain number of parking spots, or pay for it. Snappy Sushi found a creative way around this, and the large table makes for a unique atmosphere, turning a potential negative into a more positive experience.

The food is top notch. They serve the same miso soup as everyone does, but their other appetizers, including the edamame, are quite good. I particularly recommend you sample their Ika Salad with Smoked Squid. The flavor is incredible.

Most of their nigiri or sashimi style sushi is only $1.00 per piece. If you have a craving for tuna or bass, you can really load up on these less expensive items. If you want something a little more elaborate, move up to their fancy rolls. With options like spicy chicken teriyaki, tuna gone wild, portabella roll (great for them vegematarians), and the elaborate and fabulous Boston lobster roll, you are going to find some sushi flavors you've never explored before. It's worth making multiple trips and trying it all.

At lunch time, you can enjoy a sushi lunch box special. If you can never get enough sushi with your bento box, here's your chance.

Rounding out their menu with a number of donburi options and a number of more traditional sushi rolls (futomaki, Philadelphia roll, etc.), they also specialize in a style of sushi called battera, in which the layers of fish are made upside down and pressed tightly together to create a sort of loaf, which is then cut into individual pieces. Quite a change if you're used to nigiri style.

Fairly inexpensive and with many interesting combinations. This sushi gets the Bear's thumbs up.

- The Happy Bear