daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Our second signature family holiday meal is a Hawaiian feast. This year we enjoyed kalua pig, lau lau, lomi salmon, chicken long rice (not pictured), musubi, and poi. New this year were some sweet bread rolls, and Chinese greens with spicy tofu. So good!
Will definitely need to run a few extra miles to burn off some of these calories! 😝
We visited our friends at their house tonight and shared a huge holiday dinner. They made a turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and ham because they missed their Thanksgiving turkey this year, and since I was the only one tonight who knew how to carve a turkey, I was put to work. 😀 Mariko prepared a cheese board, and our hosts provided delicious beverages. It was all so yummy!
FYI, our family has been careful with our health, with testing as needed (we’ve all been boosted), and masking up (I wear a KN-95 or N-95 mask). So far so good! The only sickness we’ve had is Koa sleeping all day after his booster, and Bay having a headache after his.
Tonight Mariko and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary with an amazing omakase dinner at Takao restaurant in Brentwood. We’ve been to Takao a few times for our anniversary and have always enjoyed it.
This time, the executive chef/owner, Izumida Takao, prepared all of our main dishes. Everything was delicious, but the toro wrapped around uni, and topped with caviar and truffles (photo above) was both Mariko and my favorite. In fact, it was one of the best things I’ve ever eaten in my whole life! 😀 If you would like to try some awesome sushi, I definitely recommend Takao.
Usually one of the first meals we have when we visit family in Torrance is CoCo Ichibanya curry, but this year we opted to try Josui Ramen. It was yummy! The service wasn’t the best (and the timing of when the food came out was not optimal), but the portions were large and the broth was delicious and very hot. Recommended!
We had one of my all-time favorite meals tonight: okonomiyaki! This particular okonomiyaki is Hiroshima-style, which is a bit different than the Osaka-style okonomiyaki. The batter is layered instead of mixed with the cabbage, and there’s yakisoba and egg on it. It was delicious! And perfect with a cold Sapporo. いただきます！
