Restaurant: Uchi

904 Westheimer Rd
Houston Texas 77006

It was St. Patrick's weekend. I put on a green dress and big poppa and i set out to meet gau and queenie for a long overdue dinner. When i heard that uchi had opened, i knew there was no one else that i wanted to go eat there with than mister gau. We kept having to cancel and change the date for a whole month until this day finally happened. And it was well worth it! Prolly the most raw fish i'd ever eaten in my life in one setting. After making reservations and then having to cancel, we decided we would simply take our chances and go as walk-ins. Luckily, uchi's policy is to keep half of their restaurant open for walk-ins and allowing reservations for the other half. We only had to wait about thirty minutes until we were seated at a table. Not bad! We decided to order an omakase as well as some other dishes. All of their dishes are small and are meant to share. Like japanese dim sum tapas but priced as if it were regular larger entrees. So expensive! We supplemented the omakase so that all of us could have a piece/bite of whatever it would be. So much money! Gau ended up knowing one of the sushi chefs so we got a smidgeon of a discount but was given several extra dishes. The bill. So big. But we didn't pay cos gau did a little sneak attack and paid for the bill without any of us knowing. I had two glasses of pinot noir and big poppa went through about 3-4 beers. There's no way either of us were on our toes about anything. The food was all really really good. But would i go there just for fun/ Probably not. It's expensive and not the type of food i naturally gravitate towards. But it mos def was a good experience. I wish these types of restos would just give all their patrons paper menus at the end of the meal. How is it possible to remember the five minute description of the food in front of us. Seriously. And half the time i'm already struggling to hear them use names of fish that are not recognizable. I'll briefly try to describe some of the stuff that i took pics of.

complimentary onion rings bar bites

hydroponic baby romaine, edemame, jalapeno

thinly sliced flounder sashimi, candied quinoa, olive oil

red snapper nigiri

diverscallop, green tomato, cucumber, shishito

mejino, chinu

smoked baby yellowtail, yucca crisp, marcona almond, marcona almond, asian pear, garlic brittle

golden tile fish, shrimp coconut milk, basil, candied onion

tempura shrimp spring roll, nuoc mam, grapes

salmon and salmon belly sashimi. best salmon evar. truly buttery. we ordered three more orders of this.

kusshi oyster, lychee granite. west coast oysters. i totally spit this out. everyone told me not to eat it cos it was really fishy and not good. i went for it anyway and was gagging for five minutes. bleh. skip this.

jar jar duck, countryside farms duck, kumquat, endive, rosemary smoke

seared escolar

baby yellowtail, hoshi hikari rice, farm egg, soy broth

spicy scallop, avocado

hot rock, wagyu beef, ponzu

avocado, sun-dried tomato, gobo, soy paper, salmon. This was not good. It's that pickled carrot that threw it off.

atlantic salmon, dinosaur kale, asian yuzu

salmon sashimi

bigeye tuna, pumpkin seed oil, fuji apple

short rib, carrot, garlic, orange nuon mam, egg

bigeye tuna, avocado, jalapeno, cucumber

pork belly, black lime, coriander, citrus, espresso fish caramel

foie nigiri. also did not eat this. something along the lines of force feeding.

fried milk: chocolate milk, toasted milk, iced milk sherbet

lemon gelato: pistachios, white balsalmic

Musik Mundi: Ingrid Michaelson

Ingrid Michaelson
Album: Human Again (2012)
Song: In The Sea
Song: Palm Of Your Hand
Song: This Is War

Last week big poppa beat me in words with friends. Seriously?!? I couldn't believe it. My vocabulary bank is mos def bigger than his. The reason why he won is cos he's a word guesser. The people behind the game needs to change it so that points get deducted when you incorrectly make up words. It really left me in a bitter mood. So of course i wanted to play again. I won the next game. But it's just not the same. Cos wut if he LET me win? Ugh. Things have been a little rough the last couple of weeks so i was grateful to have a weekend filled with eating out with a few people i hadn't seen in a while. As for musik, well, i haven't really been listening to anything new. No one has been sending me anything. So i had a quick blip of personal time sunday night and previewed ingrid's new album. There's a lot of tracks that i like but i haven't narrowed it down yet. Hence the long list of songs on the playlist right now. And wut makes her even more awesome is that she did an awesome cover of gotye's someone that you used to know. She's so cute and quirky. And the girl just got married to greg laswell in january! He is the guy behind one of my fave songs.

*photo courtesy of amazon.com*

Trippin': Cairns - The Wildlife Habitat

On the third day in Cairns, we went on this rainforest and cape tribulation tour. I booked the tour as part of this combo dive and rainfores package. Sometimes i wonder if i may be wasting my time and money by booking tours but i really thot that this was worth it. Since there really isn't anything to do in cairns, i enjoyed getting the chance to do some hiking, learning and sight seeing. Shane was our driver as well as tour guide and i totally super loved him! Such a nice guy. I thot he spoke really well and was very entertained with his stories and learned a lot from him. It was a long drive to our first destination in Port Douglas which would be the The Wildlife Habitat. One of Shane's first few things he talked about was how the aussies love giving everyone and everything nicknames. His own nickname from his mum was Shano. For some reason, i kept calling him Shaneo which although a bit brittish, i felt it had a better sound to it and ignored him every time he tried to correct me. Haha. SHANEO! He also went into great detail about the discovery of australia and more specifically, cape tribulation. I'm not sure how much history I want to discuss here since anyone reading this could easily look this information up themselves but i'll talk about the one or two things that i found to be interesting. The dutch were the first to land on what is now australia. But because they landed on the western side which is desolate and nearly unlivable with it being extremely hot and desert like, they pretty much left and didn't think it was worth staking any claim to it. It was the british who finally claimed it as theirs when the explorer captain james cook landed at what is now cape tribulation on the northeastern side of australia. The beach area where he landed has large reefs that grow right up and out of the waters. His boat crashed into these reefs and nearly sank it. With his boat stuck in the reefs, his bad mood has been said to reflect how he named his discoveries in this area: cape tribulation, mount sorrow, desperation point. Also, when shaneo initally talked about captain cook, for some reason i thot he was talking about captain HOOK and was all like, OH MY GAWD HE WAS REAL? ... maybe the lost boys are in these forests RIGHT NOW! I'm stupid. Please forgive me. So we arrive at the wildlife habitat. I'm still battling internally the whole idea of captured animals and their exploitation by humans. On one hand, i really wanted to see kangaroos and koalas up close but on the other hand, i feel it's just so selfish of me to think that it's okay because ultimately, this is not their home and it's not where they belong. I don't think humans have the right to determine whether or not a species is over-populated just because we are at the top of the food chain. So in my muddled area of transition, i personally decided to make compromises with myself that since i was allowing myself to see these confined animals, then i wouldn't let myself touch them. Does that even make any sense? It did to me at the time. Baby steps right? So i didn't pet them and i didn't feed them. Oh yeah, i guess i should mention that there was an open kangaroo habitat where these different types of k'roos were hopping about wherever they please. It's pretty exciting for us tourists to be able to meet these furries up close and be able to feed them. I was a bit disturbed by how hungry they were. I kept telling myself it was because it was so early in the morning and it was their breakfast. Let's hope that was the case. I know that mochi and middle sistar really wanted the chance to hold a koala and take pictures with them. Although i was a bit devastated by this idea, i'm not the type to preach my opinions to anyone because they can make their own decisions and do whatever they want to do. Luckily, koala time didn't start til later in the day and we would have left well before then. Small victory!