o ko no mi ya ki

that's a lot of syllables, i know. i like the korean word, jun, better. ironic since brevity is not my strong suit. basically, it's a form of japanese street food in the form of a savory pancake cooked with various ingredients in the batter. this gives a good summary and a good how-to. if you're still in doubt, there are quite a few video tutorials out there, too. however, i threw all caution to the wind and did not find the above links until oh, now. i tried okonomiyaki for the first time oh, a few days ago.

matsato hu's, who i previously referred to in this blog as masago, girlfriend d is in town for the holidays. we always enjoy going out with them, so the boys figured we could go to dinner before their kinda-sorta-not-really-weekly bowling night. oh, and that's not his real full name, so don't bother googling, you stalkers. they suggested gaja moc in lomita for dinner.

so the food. each table has its own little teppan grill with overhead vent hood. too bad the hoods don't do much. our clothes smelled worse than they do after korean bbq. if you're still nervous even after all that internets research above, you can have the chef cook your chosen okonomiyaki with your selected ingredients in the kitchen. otherwise, you can cook it yourself at your table. since matsato hu is suprisingly fobulous and d lived in japan for awhile, they confidently took up the [blurry] spatulas for us.

it turns out the bear is the best pancake maker of us all. our first turned out kinda deformed. the bear flipped the second and made it much prettier. too bad i didn't get photos of that one. back to our first...

we ordered some other teppan (no benihana chef included, sorry) and izakaya small plates menu items, too (see the pretty, marbled meat above). more on the extensive menu later.

oops. we kind of hit the side of the grill while flipping it.

lotsa sauces.

we painted on the sweet, kind of teriyaki-like sauce, sprinkled some seaweed on top of that, then squeezed on some kewpie mayo, and finally sprinkled on bonito flakes (like a fish version of bacon bits but so much more melt-on-your-tongue and ethereal...not heavy at all).

one order makes two decent-sized pancakes, which we split into fourths. oh wait, i forgot to mention what kind we ordered. cheese + mochi. when these two get all melty and are fried up in batter...O.M.G. melty goodness. meeeeelty goodness, i say. and there's other standard stuff in the batter, too. julienned cabbage and veggies and such. whatever. the mochi and cheese made these.

what? you thought potato could live on pancakes alone? no way. we ordered a few other items from the a la carte, izakaya-style menu. they also have a rather extensive menu of japanese-style pastas, salads, etc., etc. the menu is huge and rather intimidating, despite almost every item being pictured.

• you saw the meat above, to be grilled
• karaage chicken (japanese-style deep fried chicken) with spicy mayo
  
• fishcake with bacon and cheese. except this fishcake looked and felt like a marshmallow. it didn't taste like it, though, thank goodness.

• pork + kimchee fried udon. we voted for the chef to cook it rather than attempting frying the noodles up ourselves on our mini teppan grill.
  

dessert is supposed to be good here, but we got full while waiting for the waitstaff to come take our dessert order. hmph. so we just paid and left.

calpico parfait? yes, please.


um, and one of each of the rest, too.
i must try the meron [sic] bar parfait to see
if it differs from the melon bars i grew up on.

they also serve ice cream, furuits [sic] plate, fruit-flavored soju, and other random desserts. i mean, there's a whole separate, multi-page book labeled "dessert menu." yeesh.

tasty? yes. fun? most definitely. smelly? oh yeah. now for the caveats--well, besides the whole smelly thing. this is street food. the prices aren't quite street. for the above mini portions of food and two pitchers of beer, we came out at about $20 per person. we were reasonably full, but would have been happier had we had dessert. plus the boys were saving room for the famous chili cheese fries at the bowling alley. not bad at all for a dinner out but not what you'd spend at, say, a taco truck, either. also, i've never had authentic okonomiyaki. in fact, i haven't had it anywhere else before, so i'm not sure if what we had was, like, totally excellent, dude. but like i said, it was fun and tasty!

completely unrelated but from the same night.

the bar/karaoke bar at the bowling alley was quite festive.

this group of people there
sang the best old school slow jams.
and they were dang good.
too intimidating.

i always wanted to buy these from somewhere
besides disneyland when i was young.

sad face. sad face. sad face.

so go try some melty, cheesy "damn good gook* food," to quote clint eastwood...today!

*i am indeed a gook, so don't get your panties all in a bunch.

just another saturday

we had grand plans for saturday morning--wake up early, go to costco as soon as it opened to buy the random stuff on our list (gum, salmon, rock band, and vodka), get me fitted for real running shoes*, then hit up a few more stops on our way to our pho place for lunch.

costco had two of four things on our list. plus one thing not on our list. more on that later.

at a snail's pace, where the bear buys his running shoes, we discovered i had feet fit for old lady-looking shoes. i ended up with some asics gel 1130s. i need a light stability shoe due to mild overpronation. i also tried on a pair of brooks (too flat, too hard, and not supportive enough) and sauconys (so soft and comfy, but again not supportive enough).
we found rock band on sale at fry's. i hate fry's, but i love a [slight] bargain more. a few more stops to wrap up our errands, grab lunch, and we were home! we unloaded this out of the truck.

guess which one i was more excited about?
BZZZZ!!! WRONG! i was super excited about the tupperware.
it's quite a bargain at costco.
dang hagalicious tendencies are coming out.
dudes! they don't retain smells! per all our friends in seattle!
[busting out kimchi for the ultimate test]
the bear was excited about both.
and his new toy in the background.

i was supposed to study all afternoon. instead, i napped. i played rock band (i suck at drums, am OK at guitar, and rock at singing). we ran. i ate. then i finally studied just a little bit.

*yes, i am going to start running as it's something the bear and i can do together, i want to run the nike runhitremix 5-mile in august/september in a decent-for-me time, cee will probably run the 5-mile with me since it's before her halfie, and i actually have an awesome group of ladies who are training for a half marathon to provide moral support and commiserate with me. whee!

four. point. three.

as in number of hours. no, not the number of hours i billed today (i billed quite a few more, tyvm). the number of hours i sat in traffic. double the number of hours it usually takes. almost quadruple the time it should take, were it not for insane southern california traffic.

i had grand plans for major productivity tonight, especially since this saturday is somewhat of a d-day. i was also going to point about karaokefest, but it may be too late since it's already posted here, there, everywhere, almost live, and even way over here.

alright, i'll post my favorite photo. temyears' head is rather portable, no? there is more evidence of it on her blog header and her most recent post.


anyway, so much for knocking stuff off the list. i'm falling into bed instead.