Jake's Birthday

Saturday was Jake's birthday. Lu had decided she wanted to take them out to dinner. They decided on Shiro, a restaurant and sushi bar in Novi. So, Lu and I spent the last few days pouring over the menu Jake had sent us.

We were supposed to be at Jake and Carla's house at 2:00 PM, to visit a while and play with the dog. Dinner reservations were at 5:00.

I made some coffee for me (the first time in over two weeks - I feared the coffee!) and putzed around in the morning (vacuumed the carpet and the walk-off rungs, etc.) Meanwhile back at Waqua Creek Kids (the name of Lu and Sadie's goat farm) Sadie and some friends were loading up 19 male kids (10-12 weeks old) to take to the livestock auction. About noon, Lu decided to try and get some tan on her legs, so she went out on the patio after asking me to call her in a half hour.

I did, but as she was moving the chair back, she slipped and fell, bruising both her palms and skinning the hell out of her knee on the concrete. It looked bad! So, I gave her some peroxide and a large bandage and went to get cleaned up.

I shaved and showered and got dressed. When Lu was ready, we left for Jake's.

After greeting the dog (obligatory), we moved into the living room talking, chatting and laughing. Just before we left to eat, Sadie called Lu and told her the goats had sold for the amazing price of $1144.00!!! Lu did a happy dance and shouted!

We left for the restaurant about 4:30 PM. As I said back a couple years ago, Shiro's is a Japanese and French fusion restaurant inside the distinctive setting of a 1930's Greek revival mansion. The white mansion was built in 1929 as a gift from Charles Rodgers to his future wife, Harriet Thornton. Charles had the grand staircase (and it IS grand, BTW) designed to fulfill a special dream. Because he had fallen in love at first sight, it was his wish to see a daughter escorted down the stairs to marry her own true love.

I am going to try and recreate what we ordered (it's complicated, so bear with me):

We all shared two appetizer-sized orders of vegetable tempura with a soy based dipping sauce (the red peppers were the best!) and a bottle of Sho Chiku Bai (warm sake).

We all ordered the miso soup (I'd never had it before, but they all had). Delicious!

Jake and Carla picked out a variety of sushi and sashimi we could all try and ordered two of each:

Toro (fatty tuna) sashimi
Hotate Gai (scallops) sashimi
Ika (squid) sashimi
Tai (red snapper) sushi
Unagi (spicy BBQ eel) sushi
Amaebi (Sweet shrimp) sushi
A.A.C. (Avocado, asparagus, cucumber) sushi
Spicy King Crab Roll (just what is sounds like) sushi
Spider Roll (Deep fried soft shell crab, avocado, cucumber) sushi
Tobiko (Flying fish roe) sushi

Lu also ordered a grilled Albacore tuna roll (tuna, jalapeno and avocado) sushi. And I ordered a Tempura Udon noodle bowl (bonito broth with shrimp tempura).

Now, why with all this food did I also order a Udon noodle bowl? Because I've watched people on TV eating Udon noodles for years; some on cooking shows, but mostly on travel shows (Bourdain's No Reservations, etc.). It is the most popular Asian street food and I always wondered how it tasted.

And, the coolest thing about it is you are SUPPOSED to slurp them! None of this Western daintiness of carefully twirling your spaghetti on your fork, so as not to offend the other diners. You just suck them down! And make a lot of noise doing it!!

Unfortunately, the sushi and sashimi came out first. We all dug in, trying this and that. I didn't eat everything (not even close) but my two personal favorites were the A.A.C. sushi and the Spicy King Crab Roll sushi. We shared another bottle of the Sho Chiku Bai (warm sake).

Sidebar: My chop stick licks were pretty damn rusty, but I made it through the whole meal using them.

Finally, they brought out my Udon noodles in a HUGE bowl. I ate the two tempura shrimp (excellent) and then started on the noodles. There were a variety of Asian herbs and vegetables, along with a slice of hard boiled eggs in the bowl too. The bonito broth was better than I'd hoped for, BTW.

Then I began to slurp my noodles. They are about twice as fat as the thickest spaghetti. One thing they never showed on the travel shows is, with all the slurping, your glasses, beard and face soon become dotted with broth! So, I throttled back on the velocity of my slurp.

But, try as I might, I could only eat less than half the bowl.

I was fascinated watching Lu, who tried everything once, some more than once. And, she liked the sake.

We did leave some items, but not much and, of course, over half my Udon noodles.

We headed back to Jake and Carla's, and then Lu and I headed home. We got there about 7:30 PM and I immediately lay down (I was full and tired). I read and don't /think/ I slept any. I got back up for an hour or so around 9:00 but then went back to bed for the night.