new restuarant... suki

I haven't had food from a decent new place in awhile, so I thought I'd let my readers know about a new joint that I've been waiting to open for 3 months now. It's called Suki, and it's at the old Tippins at 71st and Memorial.
I had no expectations about Suki because I had no idea what kind of food it would be. The sign outside only said "Unique Dining" so it left a little to the imagination. S and I went there last night around 9:30. We would've arrived sooner but we were finishing off a free pitcher of beer. There were few diners in the place but they said it was no problem we were coming in 30 minutes before close.
When we walked in, it was nice - I can't compare it to Tippins because I never ate there but it was clean and the aesthetics were good. The tables were all marble with hot pots (shobu shobu) in the middle and there were big, comfy chairs. Our waiter was a little goofy but he charmed us after his nerves wore off. We both ordered the norm - Crown & Diet (me) and Crown & Sprite (S). Got our drinks and started checking out the menu. It was a little bit confusing, things weren't really specified, like whether each meal was per person or for two people. There is a complimentary section that details what you get with each dinner. We finally decided to split a meal from the four choices: A, B, C, or D and we got an extra appetizer set up.

The complimentary section included:

• Asian lettuce cup - a 2-bite piece of Romaine with sticky rice, enoki mushrooms, and black sesame seeds, served with shoyu and ginger.
• Mixed green salad - fresh greens, red and yellow bell pepper, onion, and a sweet dressing.
• Soup of the Day - we choose the Shrimp Bisque, there was also a White Miso.
  
• Kimchi - homemade by the owner, fermented cabbage leaves with carrots and garlic.
• Japanese pickles - self explanatory.
• Country-style Jjul or handmade noodles. We choose the Jjul - a traditional Korean rice porridge.
  
• Chef's selection of ice cream - our serving was coconut.
  

S and I chose option B ($26) for our meal, which included:

• 4 oz. of top sirloin
• 3 saltwater prawns
• 2 Georgia banks scallops
• 4 Windsor Bay mussels
  
• 2 oz. big eye tuna
• seasonal vegetables - eggplant, broccoli, 3 kinds of mushrooms, zucchini, daikon, squash, and others

You also get to choose three different kinds of dipping sauces. I chose the wasabi, chili, and sesame sauces. I loved the wasabi and chili sauces - both were super spicy but very good. I believe our served goofed up and gave us plain soy sauce instead of the sesame sauce because that's what it tasted like, but was a good mixture with the other two.

Okay, now on to what I thought of the meal. The lettuce cup was small and rather bland. The green salad was nice and crisp but needed a touch more of the dressing, which reminded me of honey mustard and not that boring ginger crap you get at other places. The shrimp bisque was good, pureed a bit too much, and kind of tasted like tortilla chips. The kimchi was awesome, being my first experience with it, I really loved it. It was spicy and tangy, two things I love. I would definitely eat it again. The Japanese pickles tasted just like the apple cider pickles I made this past summer, nice and sweet.

The server brought out vegetable broth to pre-heat while we were eating our appetizers. It quickly started to boil and smelled great. He then brought out the plate of veggies and started cooking them in front of us. He gave us both equal servings and we started chowing down. After a few minutes, the server came back with a plate of thinly sliced beef. He placed the beef in the pot and cooked it very quickly, in less than a minute. He dished it up for us and we started dipping in the yummy sauces. The beef was nice and tender, very lean and tasty. After that was finished, the server came back to clean the fat off the top of the hot pot. He ladled that off and left only to return with a large plate of seafood. When I say large, I'm talking about the seafood - not the plate. All I can say is that that was definitely my favorite part. First he dipped the beautiful, bright red tuna in the pots. He turned it for a few seconds and dropped a piece on each of our plates. It was awesome - barely cooked and so fresh. Then he put the prawns and mussels in the pots. They quickly started cooking too. After about a minute he dropped the huge scallops into the pot and let them cook for a minute. He started scoping the gigantic seafood onto our plates after the mussels popped open. I'm not even kidding - this seafood was probably the largest I've ever had on a plate. The prawns were as big as three of my thumbs and the scallops were the size of golf balls. The mussels were okay, I'm not the biggest fan, but they were okay. The last part of the broth left in the hot pot was used to make the Jjul, the Korean porridge. It was very flavorful from all of the food being cooked in it. I was so full by this point, I only had room to take a couple of bites because I had to save a teeny bit of room for the coconut ice cream, which was also fantastic.

I do not see how one person could have eaten that whole meal. It was a ton of food! My Toddles wouldn't have let me down, he would have been in heaven. S and I shared the meal for one and it was way more than enough. I really enjoyed the entire meal, I felt bad that were were there 1 1/2 hours past closing time but I think they'd expect that since it is always going to take that long to cook a meal at the table. The entire staff was friendly and attentive. All in all, we spent $50 for a meal that left us both very happy and full, and we got a new dining experience! I'll go back...

The Flying Roll Chicken House

Last night was the big night before my hardcore diet starts. I wanted some homemade, Southern fried food and I got some... Sean and I went to The Flying Roll Chicken House for dinner. We got around 7:00 Sunday night. We walked up to this cute little red barn looking place with a picket fence and a windmill in the front. We were greeted as soon as we walked in the door. It looked better on the outside than it did on the inside, but I think that was the point. There were funny signs everywhere with roll sayings on them and they were playing honky tonk music that I wanted to sing along to. They sat us in the back room, it wasn't very busy for a Sunday evening.

I looked over the menu and they had your basic Southern grub - chicken fried steak, pot roast, fried catfish, smoked chicken, chicken fingers, and of course - their signature fried chicken. I had been craving pot roast all day long so that's what I chose. Sean was brave and went with the fried chicken (neither of us eat stuff with bones in it). Our waitress was either a) really tired or b) really lazy. The poor thing could not multitask, she had this really empty look on her face, and she sounded like a robot. I let it slide since it had probably been a long day for her, Sunday diners are the worst.

She brought our salad, er, shall I say ranch with lettuce bits, out when she took our drink order. It was just regular iceberg mix drenched in ranch dressing. I had a few bites just to test the dressing but I already knew this wasn't a "get full on salad" kind of night so I didn't waste any belly space on the green stuff. About 6 minutes after we got our drinks, the food arrived. Now that is one thing that never happens. Seriously. It was that fast. Robot-girl handed me a plate of steaming hot pot roast that was about the size of my head and Sean got a huge portion of fried chicken. She then sat our sides down - green beans, creamed corn, mashed potatoes, and gravy - all in bowls with enough for 2 people. See, the cool thing about The Flying Roll, the sides are bottomless. I scooped some of the sides onto plate #2 because #1 was covered with the pot roast. *make oinking noise here* The green beans were perfect, you can't really mess those up. The creamed corn was real creamed corn, not that stuff that comes out of the can with pieces of kernels and really sweet goo. It had this familiar taste that I couldn't figure out but finally decided it tastes like oatmeal, pretty yummy. The mashed potatoes and gravy were average but that didn't stop me from having two helpings. The Roll-boy came by and chunked two rolls at us, I had already designated Sean as the catcher, I was sitting at a bad angle. The pot roast was wonderful and really hit the spot, it wasn't too fatty or greasy and the gravy was perfect, not too salty, not too thick. Sean's chicken looked good, I'm not a fan but I did take a piece of the skin to see how it tasted. It was good, not better than my Mama's, but very good. Oh, they did come around with scoops of freshly fried okra and homemade apple butter. I tried both and they were both pretty tasty.

I think I ate about 4 pounds of food. It was a great way to kick start my diet today and remind me why I'm dieting in the first place. I had a stomachache for about 4 hours after that but it was well worth it. I will most certainly be going back because Toddles wants to try the chicken fried steak, I just won't be cleaning both plates this time...