Saturday, October 3, 2009

A Japanese Meal

**Brag Alert**

We just learned about the Yamato dynasty of Japan. One of the suggested activities in our activity guide was to make a Japanese meal. We decided to try an authentic Japanese restaurant instead. It went VERY well.

We opted to order a couple of combination meals and an appetizer for us all to share. We wanted to try as many things as possible rather than each person only tasting what was in their meals. We also weren't sure how the kids (or picky me) would respond to Japanese food. We ended up ordering:

tori karaage - deep fried boneless chicken that has been marinated in our special sauce
gyoza - fried pork and vegetable dumplings served with a special sauce
maguro niggiri - tuna sushi
gohan - sticky rice
miso soup (Scott only but I tasted)
chicken teriyaki
beef teriyaki
deep fried shrimp
vegetable tempura
calamari steak
sake (Scott only)

All three kids loved the tori karaage and gyoza. In fact, they begged us for more gyoza. Mika liked pretty much everything except the sushi, which she said wasn't good but wasn't bad. Sam liked everything except the sushi and teriyaki. Josh liked everything, especially the rice. He ate all of his rice and some of Scott's too.

The kids also had fun trying to eat with chop sticks. Mika was doing pretty good. Sam eventually got the hang of it well enough. They both refused to use the forks they brought us. Josh even tried to use the chopsticks. He wasn't as successful but he tried really hard and loved it.

The really special thing about the meal, though, had nothing to do with the food. While Scott was out in the entry with Madelynn (she was having a hard time and crying), an older Japanese woman came up to our table and told me that I had "the most well-behaved children she has ever seen in the whole world". She then stopped to tell my husband the same thing on her way out. Our waitress (who we think is probably in the family that runs the restaurant) also brought out kids some sherbert free of charge, though she didn't say why. They were being well-behaved in this quiet restaurant...even Josh.

Stumble Upon Toolbar

1 Comments:

The Four Week Vegan said...

Way to go family! Always nice to hear things like that :) My kids LOVE miso soup and it is one of my favorites too. Yes, all the kids use chopsticks everytime we go to Japanese or Chinese food. I prefer my fork :)