tuftears | February Food Catchup: Bamboo Grove Meatballs, Homemade Ramen, Curry House Omurice

Have some pictures of food!

You might recall that I mentioned Bamboo Garden in a previous post. Well, I went back there to get some more food when I was dealing with post-Further Confusion con crud. I was very pleased with these braised pork meatballs! Delicious-- light and very savory. Not salty, not spicy, just full of umami deliciousness.

It's stretching the truth a bit to call this homemade ramen, but... I had picked up some 'non-fried' ramen from an Asian market. Did you know that most instant ramen is fried to preserve it in the package? I'm not sure what process this ramen used, but the idea was to try to reduce the added fat and salt.

Anyway, I had an extra portion of cashew chicken (well, peanuts rather than cashew) left over one day, so the next day, I poured some chicken stock into a pot, boiled it, added the ramen, then once the ramen had cooked properly, I mixed in the leftovers and added some microwave-scrambled egg on top. Tasty! I could feel the difference in texture in the ramen when unpackaging it, but not once it had been cooked.

I had a yen to get some Japanese curry today. Here's the tea and the salad. I dunno what it is but their vinaigrette is perfect. Tart and sweet, none of this 'pour a thousand calories of cream on top and call it done' business.

I was originally thinking of getting their special, 'Curry Gratin', but I decided their 'light meal' would better suit me. I have been curious for a while about Japanese 'omurice'.

You can see there's rice pilaf inside the egg! Actually 'inside' is a bit of a misnomer; Curry House just lays the egg on top, there's no egg underneath as there would be with the traditional omurice.

The curry sauce is delicious though; I mixed it with both the rice/egg and the meatballs and found it a pretty satisfying meal.

After the meal, we went around the corner and visited Bitter+Sweet, an Italian coffee shop that I don't recall having seen before but proved to be nice and classy without being intimidating on the inside.

dracosphynx got a 'red velvet latte', and I got this tiramisu!

It actually struck me as more 'tiramisu-flavored cheesecake' rather than the traditional coffee-soaked ladyfingers. It was pretty good but I'd rather have had the cookie-like texture. Still, I should try their 'truffle cake' next time!