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.

While I am in between X-ray and heart scan, I’m making good use of the wireless network in this part of the hospital. Oooh, someone in medical imaging just gave me a meal voucher! I love this hospital, people are so friendly and upbeat. Unfortunately I can’t eat anything for the next 3 hours, but hopefully I won’t be feeling nauseous when I’m done so I might get myself a sammy.

This blog revolves around food and so does my life. I’m sure I think about food and what I’m going to prepare and eat much more than the average bear. Probably not too much more than the average food blogger :) One thing I wasn’t expecting over the next several months is that I would have to make a few adjustments to my diet. The main kicker: no sushi. *gasp* Honestly, I can forgo anything if necessary. I am not so inflexible.

What better reason to go and enjoy a nice sushi lunch with my sweetheart? There are a lot of places in Boulder to have sushi considering the landlocked status of the state. I haven’t lived here long enough to accept the prices for the quality compared to what I got in So Cal. Okay, but there is one place that has excellent quality and a price tag to match: Sushi Tora.

best sushi bet in boulder

We hadn’t eaten anything all day. We spent the morning taking our house apart and moving that brick of a treadmill upstairs. By 2 pm, we were famished. Let’s start with something from the kitchen:

seaweed salad

agedashi tofu

It’s a nice way to whet your appetite while perusing the menu. We sort of went nuts on the ordering because we were hungry and we knew it would be a while before we could enjoy this together (well, Jeremy is free to sushi on his own, but knowing him, he won’t).

sashimi assortment

toro (fatty tuna): gdddddgdgdgdgdgdg

I was satisfied after the toro. It was sooooooo good. One of those foods that transports you to Someplace Else. I think it’s on par with sex. I mean on par with good sex, not just any old sex. It’s the kind of toro you think about several times a day, for a couple of days after the meal. That kind of toro. I said I was satisfied, but… maki is so fun to eat.

spider roll

toro no maki: salmon, avocado, tobiko, unagi

The rolls were good. In hindsight I might have preferred ordering more toro sashimi instead, but I do love the subtle combination of sushi rice and seaweed and all of those lovely fishy things. And to top it all off - what I call dessert:

wasabi tobiko with quail egg

I think my love of tobiko with quail egg is based on 25% flavor and 75% texture. The creamy, buttery smoothness of the yolk oozing all over my mouth while the little tobiko crunch and pop their salty flavor pairs with the slight acidity of the seasoned sushi rice and the refreshing flavor of the nori. The rice lends a hefty chew and I won’t even get into the punch of the wasabi. I know most sushi chefs are mortified when Chinese come to dine on their fine creations, dousing them in wasabi as thick as paste and requesting, “more spicy” versions. We are, in their eyes, barbarians. Well, I’ve never been known for my subtlety.

After the meal, Jeremy had to roll me out the door. No worries though. That treadmill is in place and it rocks! The treadmill (when it’s running) scares the hell out of the poor dog. Check it.

to make up for those extra maki