use real butter

It was too hot to eat dinner while the sun was still up this evening. Wait a sec… *we* felt it was too hot to eat dinner while the sun was still up this evening. We didn’t sit down to our meal until 9 pm and it was still light out (love that, actually). While I waited for the house to cool down a little, I stepped out onto the deck to admire the skies to the west and enjoy the cooling mountain air. I love clouds because they can form some incredible patterns, but I especially love clouds at sunset because the light can play some beautiful colors.

like a magic show

it almost looks organic

3000 feet lower in Boulder, the daytime temperatures are standing solidly in the 80s (F) and flirting with the 90s (F). What better timing then to continue our sushi tour? On Wednesday, we dined at Amu for dinner. Amu is situated next to and operated by Sushi Zanmai. Zanmai is a darling of Boulder and probably one of the venerated favorites. My experiences at Zanmai have always left me feeling that 1) I spent a lot of money 2) I got mediocre sushi for the price 3) the service suuuuuucks and 4) every damn YUH (Young Urban Hipster) and aging hippie flocks to the place making the wait all the more annoying considering what you get at the end of it all. However, my chemo nurse assured me that Amu was different and very good.

the sign is easily missed

The interior of the restaurant is small and narrow. There was a table for 6, ten seats at the bar, and maybe a private room or two in the back. We were asked to remove our shoes before sitting at the bar.

enter the bar through a giant noren

seats soon to be filled

For those in search of California rolls or the generic assortment of sushi - that dog don’t hunt. Not here anyway. This bar serves traditional Japanese fare and the menu has specials from the kitchen and sashimi from the bar. No sushi. If you want sushi, go next door and suffer the crappy wait staff at Zanmai (yeah, I really detest those blokes).

to start

Our little dish of complimentary starter was a delightful cold “salad” of broccoli in a miso dressing with some kabocha (Japanese pumpkin) and what Jin tells me is konnyaku (part of the voodoo lily family - thanks, Jin!). I decided on an order of marinated seaweed because I thought I was ordering a seaweed salad.

mozuku

That wasn’t quite the salad I was expecting. In fact, it was nothing like what I was expecting. However, mixed with the minced ginger, it was a tangy and savory almost noodle-like dish. I was lukewarm about it. Jeremy was not loving this one at all (the man frightens easily when it comes to certain foods), so I finished it. I mean, seaweed is supposed to be good for your hair… that is what Grandma tells me. It’s about time my hair started to grow back, yeah?

sashimi assortment

Enough screwing around though… it was time to get down to business, and that business would be gorgeous, buttery, melt-in-your-mouth sashimi. Why fill up on rice when you can enjoy protein in its loveliest form? If sashimi were a man, it would be a metrosexual because it is so pretty - and I would date the hell out of him. Oh yes… I would… All of the sashimi (sake, maguro, bonito, hamachi, tako) was fresh and tasted like a rich kiss in the mouth. Excellent quality.

binnaga tataki

Next up: the seared albacore tuna. This delicate fish was dressed in a citrusy ponzu under a mound of shiso chiffonade, green onions, fennel, and garlic. The combination of vegetation was terrific and had a wonderful perfume (the shiso is so refreshing), but overpowered the subtle flavor of the albacore somewhat. I enjoyed the plate, although Jeremy was suspiciously generous about letting me finish it off.

halibut sashimi special

I watched with fascination while our sushi chef, Yuki, prepared a long fillet of halibut. That’s right, folks - we had a female sushi chef. My first ever! And she was AWESOME. Yuki trained in Japan for 5 years and in Boulder for 13 years. Although she doesn’t tele, she does ride at Vail, her resort of choice. *Sweet* Because if you live in a state blessed with powder, what the hell are you doing if you aren’t skiing or riding?

Okay, back to the halibut. The sashimi was served with ponzu for dipping. It was fresh with a good, firm texture. Yuki also advised that we dip the little omelette rolls in soy sauce. Those little omelette rolls were amazing. She wrapped a thin egg sheet around slices of halibut with shiso and thinly sliced cucumber. The combination of the flavors and textures was *brilliant*.

ahhhhh, hamachi

We ended the meal with a final order of hamachi sashimi. The hamachi was sublime and the pieces substantial. Our server asked if we wanted to order any dessert and I informed her that hamachi is essentially dessert to us. The service at Amu was the best of the sushi tour thus far. It’s a little hard to compare with the others because it is so much more authentic (Japanese) and the style of the food is quite different. We certainly felt Amu was a good experience and it comes close to dethroning Tora, but… Sushi Tora is still #1 for us, by a hair. What we are discovering is that Boulder - in the middle of a landlocked state and over 1000 miles from the nearest coast - has a lot of great sushi to offer.

1) Sushi Tora
2) Amu Sake Bar and Restaurant
3) Ai Sushi and Steak

I’m just so thrilled to be eating sushi again, and sushi this good. Yip!

This is my first week of my radiation treatment. Unlike chemo, radiation is daily instead of once every three weeks. Unlike chemo, radiation lasts all of a few minutes instead of 3 hours. Unlike chemo, radiation doesn’t suck shit nearly as much! There are still going to be side effects, but they will appear later and won’t bring my life to a screeching halt quite like chemo did. At least, I hope they won’t.

in the stairwell of the cancer center

The cancer center is a lovely building and the people are so incredibly friendly and kind. I am in a good mood when I go in, and it’s not forced like it is when I have to deal with a department like General Surgery at the medical center. The other day when I went for my treatment, I wooshed into the dressing room and emerged in less than a minute with a gown on and dumped my stuff in a locker. One of my radiation techs said I was like a superhero, dashing into the changing room and emerging with a gown on faster than anyone. Ha ha! My dreams of superhero status will be realized yet :)

Another thing I like about radiation… I can eat sushi. And eat sushi, I have been. With gusto! as my dear oncologist would say (he didn’t tell me to eat sushi with gusto, he was asking me to breathe with gusto while he listened to my lungs). I had lunch with one of my tele betties in Boulder yesterday at Sushi Tora. I could eat sushi every day for every meal and never tire of it. Never.

my bee-yoo-tee-ful chirashi

Just the day before, I met up with Jeremy at Ai Sushi and Steak at Boulder’s 29th Street mall. It’s a relatively new restaurant in the relatively new pedestrian mall. We thought it looked a little mall-ish which isn’t what you necessarily want when hunting for a good sushi dive.

bad idea: posting photos of sushi in black and white

the modern interior

The place is huge with a section for teppan, a sit down section, and a relatively large sushi bar and booze bar. I’m guessing it seats about 120. I honestly didn’t have high expectations for the place, but immediately noted that our server, a young Japanese woman, was ten times more professional than the dorkus at Sushi Tora and she spoke fluent Japanese (with the sushi chefs). Bonus.

starter salads and jeremy’s lychee martini

sunlight roll and hamachi nigiri

The starter salads were a mix of mi fun (thin rice noodles) with real crab meat, and avocado in a light seasoned rice wine vinegar. Delicious and refreshing on such a warm day (it was 90F in Boulder) - it also cleansed the palate nicely. Since it was happy hour, Jeremy sprang for a lychee martini and we began with a sunlight roll (soft shell crab, eel, avocado, and 2 colors of flying fish roe) and an order of hamachi nigiri. The sunlight roll was great if you like the combo of crunchy, salty, sweet, smooth, creamy - which we do! Excellent quality hamachi.

otoro sashimi

special roll - our request: spicy tuna, spicy scallop, avocado, masago

Next came our otoro sashimi which was $6 a piece. Toro is fatty tuna or the belly of the tuna. Otoro is the fattiest part of the belly (chutoro isn’t as fatty, but is part of the belly). This was quiet amazing and melt-in-your-mouth, but I’ve had better otoro at other places and for less than $6 a piece. The special roll was our own requested combination - a holdover from our favorite sushi joint in South Pasadena. It was well done, but not as good as the original.

samurai

end it on tamago

The samurai roll is a shrimp tempura roll with tuna, salmon, eel, and avocado. I liked this roll, but I prefer the sunshine roll to this one. We finally ended with an order of tamago (egg omelette) nigiri and Jeremy had another order of hamachi nigiri. The prices were on par with Sushi Tora and the quality was pretty good - perhaps a half notch below Tora. The service was better despite the “mall-ish” setting and feel of the place. And there always seems to be one sushi chef who loves to flirt with the ladies - he was a charmer for sure. Who doesn’t love a man who offers you a complimentary specialty maki? Unfortunately, he offered it after we had finished our meal and were ready to pop like two fat ticks.

Now that we have two restaurants on the tour, I can begin ranking them:

1) Sushi Tora
2) Ai Sushi and Steak

Ai is a close second to Tora. Stay tuned to see if next week’s selection dethrones Tora.

Remember when I said I was going to eat sushi when my Gi tract healed up and my immune system returned to normal? Yesterday began our sushi tour. We decided to start with the familiar because I didn’t want to deal with any unpleasant surprises. Sushi Tora in Boulder is our local favorite.

a perfect day for sushi

Oh, but before I dive into the meal, I have been tagged by Sarah of Sweet Endeavors for a meme. Thanks Sarah! I haven’t been good about memes lately because of chemo crap and such. So here goes:

1) What were you doing ten years ago?
I was in graduate school at Cornell. I was working my ass off toward a PhD and I had just begun to realize that this gig was starting to suck big time.

2) What are five non-work things on my to-do list for today?
1) pick up my compression sleeve for my lymphedema
2) candy an ass ton of orange peels
3) apply dry rub to some pork shoulder
4) work out
5) give the pup a bath

3) What snacks do you enjoy?
1) jalapeño potato chips
2) jicama
3) mango
4) dill pickles
5) fruity popsicles

4) What would you do if you were a billionaire?
1) endow jeremy’s faculty position
2) open a free kitchen in my community to serve delicious food
3) promote math and science education the right way
4) teach kickass babes (and ONLY kickass babes) to tele
5) blog

5) Where have you lived?
1) Virginia
2) Ann Arbor, Michigan
3) Pasadena, California
4) Ithaca, New York
5) Colorado

6) What jobs have you had?
1) crash test engineer
2) flight crash analyst and programmer
3) NASA software engineer
4) web content manager, designer, and programmer
5) GIS and remote sensing chick

And I am tagging…

Amy at eggs on sunday
Graeme at Blood Sugar
Katie at The Wasatch Report
Kevin at Closet Cooking
Mark at No Special Effects

Sushi Tora elicits images of fresh ingredients because they have an amazing assortment of herbs and vegetables plated alongside their fabulous seafood (most of it flown in daily). My greatest beef with the place is their clueless wait staff - the typical (white) young urban hipster in Boulder who is lacking in knowledge of both sushi and waiting tables. They really detract from the overall experience.

probably one of the few things i dislike here

We started with a tiny bowl of noodles. They always hand this to you with your gari (ginger) and wasabi. I’m not a fan. This is probably the only thing that I’m not fond of and it’s not on the menu, you just get it by default. On to the business at hand, we ordered a seaweed salad from the kitchen because it is a fresh and light way to start the meal. Theirs is always perfectly seasoned with the right amount of sweet and sour and salt and mmmm.

seaweed salad

Typically when we sit at the bar, a delicious little something comes compliments of the chef. This time it was salmon collar. Wonderfully tender and fatty. It’s my second favorite part of the fish. My favorite - the belly.

grilled salmon collar, on the house

No fooling around. The only sushi I had on the brain during my chemo was toro - fatty tuna. It is like butter, but it’s fish, but it melts like butter, but it’s fish… The stuff is not cheap, nor should it be, because it is amazing. We splurged on some toro sashimi (from the specials menu) and some hamachi sashimi. I normally love hamachi, but I realized the folly of my ways when I sank my teeth into the toro. We should have sprung for two orders of toro and nixed the hamachi (even though it was good, it wasn’t toro).

toro (fatty tuna) and hamachi (yellowtail) sashimi

Jeremy had a mind to sample some baracuda nigiri off the specials menu and I wanted my fix of crunchy tobiko (flying fish roe) with that smooth and rich quail egg on top. It’s like dessert, really. No really. He gave the baracuda a thumbs up.

baracuda nigiri and tobiko with quail egg

Like I said, I didn’t want to fill up on rice, but I love maki of all sorts and there was still room in the tummy. Spider rolls are a no brainer. I could eat soft shell crabs all day long. They make a decent spider roll here. We also ordered a half roll of the Tora No Maki which is salmon, avocado, tobiko, and unagi (fresh water eel) - the combination of which is silk and sweet in your mouth. Next time, we’re ordering a whole roll.

spider roll and tora no maki

As an afterthought, we made one last order of ama ebi. Raw sweet shrimp is terrific, but it’s the fried shrimp heads that I’m crazy about. The shrimp heads were enormous. I almost couldn’t believe those heads came from those bodies. I felt the heads were over-battered, which gave them that heavy fried feeling instead of the typically light and delicate feeling you get with most fried Japanese food.

ama ebi (sweet shrimp)

While we were still eating, our waiter approached and asked if we wanted any dessert. We found it peculiar that he should ask while we were obviously in the middle of our meal. We said no thanks and without asking, he snatched up our order sheet and totaled our bill. What is up with that? For all he knew, we could have been ready to order more (we weren’t, but still…) I didn’t like that guy.

Overall, Sushi Tora still remains champ of Boulder sushi. We’ll see if they can keep the title over the next few weeks… meanwhile, I am thrilled to be noshing on sushi, my #1 favorite food of all time.