Toro Sushi - Restaurant Review

Toro Sushi
1105 South Main St.
Cheshire, CT 06410

Dave and I are still in the long moving process, and drove from Allentown back to Springvale today. We will do this drive three more times by the end of June. Then we are done.

Today was a very sunny day, and as always when I am faced with hours of uninterrupted sunlight on a drive, I got a blinding headache. By Connecticut I was unpleasant enough that Dave suggested we stop for food. I had a craving for sushi (this is an almost constant thing, not brought on by the headache or anything), so I did a quick search on his awesome new tablet and found a highly rated one a few miles away.

At Toro we got edamame and shumai for appetizers as usual - both good, though not extraordinary. Dave and I almost never get separate entrees anymore; we each like so many things we just narrow all the choices down to a few and share. We got five rolls: spicy salmon (because it is always good), peanut avocado roll (honey roasted peanuts and avocado *swoon*), a New York roll (Smoked salmon and apple with sesame seeds, tasty but a bit bland), a sweet potato roll (tempura sweet potato with bonito sweet sauce, my favorite of the bunch) and an Indian roll (yellow tail and banana, Dave's favorite). The service was great (hot towels to wipe your hands with after your food) and the decor tasteful. By the time we were finished my headache was gone (whether it was from the delicious food or the codeine I took beforehand, I can't say) and I was a much more pleasant person. The Dairy Queen we had after that completed my recovery and we were able to continue our trip.

Back to Allentown next Friday.

Koi - Restaurant Review

Koi Sushi Bar and Asian Cuisine
11 Elm Street
Biddeford, ME 04005

Our favorite Chinese restaurant in the area closed a few months ago, at first citing "interior decorating" as the reason. This was only slightly less hilarious as the Thai restaurant around the corner being closed due to "travel destinations in Thailand".

Last week it reopened, and is now a Chinese/Japanese fusion restaurant. This means sushi, and this means happy Allison.

We went for lunch on Saturday, and had triple awesomeness - happy hour specials, lunch specials, and Grand Opening specials. Appetizers were half off for happy hour, and the Grand Opening lunch special prices were $2 per roll. Dave and I got 9 rolls between us, and three appetizers, and our lunch totaled at about $25.

I got (clockwise from top left) a California roll - cucumber, avocado and crab - a cucumber and avocado roll, a Philadelphia roll - salmon, cream cheese and green onion - and a spicy tuna roll.





I usually go with my favorites when trying a sushi place for the first time, just so I have a good frame of reference, and it was great. The fish was fresh and flavorful, and nothing was dry. The avocado was soft and ripe - hard avocado is awful.



Tyler was really hungry, as you can see from his plate. He ended up getting full and taking a lot of leftovers home, so I couldn't get a picture of him with his empty plate.



The staff are really nice and friendly, and the manager came to talk to us a few times, since we were there at the awkward 2:30 time slot between lunch and dinner, and therefor the only people there.

I would definitely recommend Koi if you want good sushi outside of Portland - nothing else compares. I would also in particular recommend going for lunch, since they have some great specials - Maki Combos with miso soup and salad: 2 rolls for $7, 3 rolls for $9.50. I'm betting the crazy cheap grand opening prices won't be around for long, but it is still less expensive than many other places I've seen. Definitely a place I will visit again.

Day in Boston

Dave was at an internal medicine conference in sunny San Diego over the weekend, and Chen was visiting medical schools, so Sisi and I decided to get together for a day in Boston. I am happy to say that, as I needed to do city driving, I did not kill anyone, and it only knocked a few years off my life from the stress. Boston drivers really are terrifying.

Since I am generally antisocial, and the idea of going to bars for fun makes me break out in hives, we decided to get dinner and watch a movie at her apartment. Sisi has been living in Boston for two years now and knows lots of really good, really cheap places to eat, which is perfect for someone who works 18 hours a week (ie me).

We ordered dinner from Genki Ya - one of the highest rated restaurants on Yelp! in her part of Boston. It is usually really busy and if you want to eat there you'll have to wait in line, but if you order take out you get your food immediately, and it is a lot cheaper. You get an automatic discount for ordering online, in addition to being able to order from the lunch menu all day. We each got the 3 roll lunch special, which includes a salad and a large bowl of miso soup, all for about $12.50. I got the spicy salmon roll (that and spicy tuna are staples for me, though at this place I felt that Sisi's spicy tuna was the better choice), a tempura mushroom roll (new for me, and very good) and a honey roll. I got the latter because it was an entirely new concept to me, and I like trying new things. Rather than including any honey, it consisted of avocado, sweet potato and banana. It was as close to a desert roll as sushi gets, and it was awesome.

While we had been waiting for our order, we went to the Brookline Booksmith, which is about 3 blocks down the street. The entire basement of this bookstore is all used, and I was delighted to find a copy of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere for $4. It is rare to find his work in used bookstores, because no one ever really wants to get rid of them. I am slowly building my collection.

After dinner we found a place to park my car overnight. This is extremely difficult to do, as most street parking is reserved for residents only. The hotel parking lot I had used in the past is now reserved for hotel guests only, so I ended up parking in a gas station. The proprietor allows parking for $15 per night, and only during hours when the station is closed. The "ticket" I was given to put on my dash was really just a piece of receipt paper with an unreadable word on it. Definitely the most ghetto parking experience of my life. It was actually difficult to park, I was laughing so hard.

We went back out after that and got Pinkberry, because that is one of my favorite things in the whole world and if I am even in the general vicinity of one, I must go. Pinkberry is my crack, people. We also spent about an hour and a half in a Newbury Comics, and I am proud (you have no idea how much willpower it took) to say I didn't buy anything. I had allotted myself $60 for the trip, not including gas, and I wanted to have enough left for food the next day. I did see a million things I wanted though: cheap DVDs, a cool wallet (I desperately need a new one, if anyone is looking for a birthday present idea :D ) and an eraser shaped like a SEAL! So cute. For real though, that wallet is a must. I've had my awesomely weird plastic one for almost four years now, and it is really starting to show its age. Rebound Designs is one of the coolest online shops I've ever seen - she makes purses and wallets from old book covers. I'd kill for a Stardust or Princess Bride wallet. Anyway.

When Sisi and I finally got back to her apartment, we used some weird Chinese facial masks she had, because this was supposed to be a girl's night, damn it! She had a bunch of different kinds - I went with the odd smelling moister renewal, and she tried the eye-puffiness reduction one. We just ended up looking like Jason Voorhees and Robin. Not the greatest look ever.

While we moisturized, we watched the fun but utterly illogical The Next Three Days. I love Russell Crowe, and it was really cool seeing him in a movie where he isn't a total badass - he is just a regular guy trying to break his wife out of a maximum security prison. Entertaining, sure, but if you are looking for a movie about what it is really like to escape from prison, watch Papillon. It has Steve McQueen in it and it's a true story. What other reasons do you need?

We got up really early so I could move my car before the gas station opened (hahaha!) and we went to Chinatown for lunch. I, naturally, wanted dim sum, so we went to Hei La Moon. It is a fairly traditional dim sum restaurant - huge room (I think there are two floors, actually), lots of Chinese people giving me, the only white person, funny looks, and women with carts. Solid food for a reasonable price.

That's about it for that weekend. Easter weekend we will be in NYC to see Lady freaking Gaga (!!!!!) so I will have more non-Maine food to talk about then.

Las Vegas!

Tuesday
I arrived in Las Vegas at 8:30 am and the first thing I saw was this billboard for the Thunder From Down Under. Not only was I suddenly absolutely certain that I was in Las Vegas, I had a very strong desire to see the show. That's what 3 hours of sleep will do to you, hu?

Travis was a doll and picked me up at the airport and took me home, where I slept for about 6 hours. Chris came home from work and we went out to get sushi for dinner. We went to Yama Sushi, which regardless of Travis' feelings, was pretty awesome. All of the special rolls had dirty names - Whose Your Daddy?, The Man Whore, Strip Tease, One Minute Man, Happy Ending. Just ordering the food was fun, as the waitress repeats everything back to you and laughs just as much. My favorite was the Wet Dream - a baked California roll topped with cream cheese and shrimp. Fantastic.

I was still tired when we got home so we decided to have a quiet night in. Apparently the current favorite movie in their household is Easy A, so we watched that and Travis made amazing cookies - Oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookies, to be precise. Delicious.

Wednesday
Some things needed to be worked on in their kitchen, so at noon, the handyman arrived. Bailey (and his dog, a sweetheart of a yellow lab) amused Travis and I for hours. Or rather, making sexually inappropriate jokes about Bailey to each other amused us for hours.

For dinner we had sushi again, this time at Sushi Mon. We, also again, got the all you can eat sushi, which is probably the greatest thing ever invented. For $25 you can eat as much as possible in 60 minutes, which for a normal person is 4-5 rolls. As each one is anywhere from $8-12, its a steal. While the names on this menu weren't as fun, the food was, as Travis swore all of the night before, much better, and their choice of baked rolls was much wider - baked rolls are my new favorite thing. They also had amazing mochi ice cream for dessert. I really need more Japanese food in my life.

After dinner Chris and Travis took me on a tour of Vegas.

























As you can see, there are pirates, various national landmarks, and even volcanoes in Las Vegas.
















Thursday
Bailey was back, this time with the parts necessary to whatever he was fixing. The filthy jokes continued and only increased with Chris' return from work. It was eventually decided that Bailey wanted all of us, and that we should have an orgy while Chris played with the dog. This (probably*) didn't happen.

The Handyman was there so long, in fact, that we decided to have a quiet night in. Travis spent a few hours teaching me how to play blackjack; it is a lot of fun, but I am too poor to actually gamble. The idea of making money is really nice, the idea of losing money really sucks. So I'll just stick with the money I have.

This relatively event-less day did lead to one fantastic discovery: the Machine of Death. It is a collection of short stories that all began with one webcomic, and if you haven't read it yet, you really should. As the velociraptor says, it sounds pretty morbid, but it is really interesting. Each story is written by a different author, and so each gives a slightly different take on the social repercussions of everyone knowing how they will die. I only got about 90 pages into it (out of nearly 500), so I should probably just bite the bullet and buy it.

Friday
Thursday night Travis informed me that we would be up early Friday morning, so I had to be ready to actually do things before noon. Damn.

The first thing we did was to buy tickets to, tra la la! The Thunder from Down Under. This was to be my first adult entertainment show, and I must admit to a certain amount of giddy-ness. We had breakfast at Coco's Bakery. Really nice place for a chain diner, and I got to try the miracle that is Red Velvet Pancakes. Be still, my beating heart.

Travis then kidnapped me. He said our destination was a surprise, and surprise it was. I had no idea the Hoover Dam is 20 miles from Vegas.





























But so it is. Here is my one nerdy fact about the Hoover Dam:
If the amount of concrete in the dam was used to build a two-lane highway, it would go from New York City to San Francisco. That's a lot of road.

Another fact, this one less fun and more the kind of thing I feel I should know, and don't: the Hoover Dam is on the boarder between Nevada and Arizona. This means halfway across, the time zone changes. It also means that we crossed into Arizona to park, and it is free there and about $10 in Nevada.

We went home after that and watched about 90 Family Guy episodes waiting for Chris to come back with Brad in tow. Apparently Las Vegas traffic sucks.







Dinner was at a faux British restaurant. The food was good, service was not. I won't say what place it was, so as not to be libelous, but suffice it to say, I wouldn't go again. Travis, Chris, Me, Brad

Then, finally, we went to see the show. The Thunder from Down Under. Even the name makes you chuckle, doesn't it? I'm not sure what I was expecting from the show - a little titillation, a little amusement, I don't know. What I was not expecting was to laugh until I cried, to not be attracted to the dancers in the slightest, but to be kissed buy one of them anyway. There were so many moments in the show that I would like to share, but I will limit myself to two.

The tears of laughter came right at the beginning. The men had already done a few dances and I was already in a high-strung, slap-happy mood. The DJ announced, during a costume change, that the "Lads from down undah, these strapping Aussie boys", would now fulfill all of our fantasies. "Give it up for, the Pirates of the Caribbean!" I think I managed to squeak "the Caribbean in Australia?!" before I dissolved into laughter. Literally. Sprawled across the table, in utter hysterics. I think I missed all of the pirate number, which is a shame, since of the choices of pirates, Spartans, firemen, and cowboys, pirates are definitely at the top of my fantasy list. I'm pretty sure all the boys (I love the fact that I went with Chris, John and Travis) thought I was out of my mind, but I don't care.

My other favorite moment came when the DJ did his own striptease. He pulled a middle aged woman onto the stage - she was there for her daughter's 21st birthday party - and culminated the act by grabbing her hand and shoving it into the front of his pants. Sexual harassment aside, she loved it. She tottered off the stage in fits of glee, stuck her offended digits into her daughter's face and yelled, loud enough for us to hear over the music, "Smell my hand!!!"

I can't really top that last part, so I'll just say that while I loved visiting my friends in Vegas, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to visit that particular city again. Maybe. You never know. I do kind of miss those Australian boys.

*It didn't.