Wa's Japanese Restaurant

My, my, my , it's been a long time since I've wrote. It's been quite a busy month (anniversary, birthday, etc), so excuse me! I will be trying to put old posts up in the next little while. I kind of got lazy and fell out of schedule with blogging, buuuuuut let's go! 

Hope everyone's been well. Recently, Calgary was hit by a flood and we're slowly rebuilding our city. I won't go into much details because I'll leave that for a different post. Not to worry, my family and I weren't hit. We're much far north from the downtown area that suffered drastically. 

Last month, Lance and I got to check out a small little Japanese place just off Center Street and 17th Avenue, NW. Oh my! This place is incredibly small but it's so intimate. It's so authentic and fresh, it's definitely one of the best sushi places in Calgary. We had reservations on a Saturday for I believe 7:30 pm just for safety because usually it's quite busy. 

The reason we chose to go to this restaurant was because for years I've been reading about a few bloggers that go to Japan and eat these awesome dishes called Chirashi. Actually, I'm kind of a fool because I always skimmed over the name of the dish or either forget it and thought that you could only get it in Japan. LOL. That was totally not true.The way I found this place was through Lance's sister's Instagram. My jaw dropped when I saw the picture, I basically begged Lance to bring me here.Since then, I've found a few other restaurants that sell Chirashi, but it's never like Wa's!

Lance and I ordered a lot of food between the two of us, ooops! But oh man, we absolutely loved it. 

We had the fried eggplant and I apologize because I cannot think of the name for this dish and the next one. You should give this a try if you're a eggplant fan. It's so yummy the way they cook it with the sauce it's served with. I just can't describe the taste. I actually put the sauce on my Chirashi rice, hehe.

Next up is a sashimi appetizer, I cannot think of the name, but it's like kimchi sashimi. I believe this one is tuna with avocado and a mild spicy sauce. You don't need soy sauce with this dish. You should enjoy it the way it's served because it's already marinated for you.

We ordered a few creamy scallop sushi, a piece of toro sashimi and salmon eggs, except they mixed up my salmon eggs for uni. =( It's okay, they sent it out to me after. =D I think it's become a habit for me to try toro at almost every Japanese restaurant we go to now. It's incredibly soft and one of my favorite sashimi. If it wasn't so expensive, I could totally just have a lot of it for dinner, hehe. The creamy scallop sushi was pretty standard compared to other Japanese restaurants. Lance and I tend to order this sushi at every Japanese place we go to too, even if we're eating other dishes than sushi. 

Now the star of the meal! OMG. It was love at first sight. Chirashi always comes with a variety of sashimi (YUM) and garnishes over a warm bed of rice. It's always beautiful and artistic the way they arrange the ingredients. It's super pricey but worth it. I recommend everyone to at least try this dish if you are heading down to Wa's. I can't do these posts on an empty tummy anymore, they just make me want to eat it again! Hopefully I'll get to have some soon. *HINT HINT* Lance. ;-) 

We also had the pork ramen because it was a tad cold that day and Lance was craving it. 

For the final dish, I ordered a Chawanmushi to share. You won't believe how excited I was to find this here in Calgary. Everywhere I go, I always look for this appie but can never find it. I believe it's more common to find it in Vancouver but this is probably the only restaurant here in Calgary that makes it. My parents always ordered it for us when we ate Japanese food in Singapore and Vancouver. It's a steam savoury egg custard with different kinds of ingredients steamed into it such as mushrooms, prawns, kamaboko, etc. This particular one only had a prawn at the bottom and a few salmon eggs, green onions and ginger on top. I wished they had added kamaboko and mushrooms in it as it would have made the dish more aesthetically pleasing and delicious. Nonetheless, I would totally order it again.

Overall we had a pleasant evening with our belly filled to the rim with food. Besides our slight hiccup with the uni, everything was splendid. I can't wait to go back to Wa's as there was a bunch of other dishes Lance and I wanted to try. 

Happy Stampede to all my fellow Calgarians. Yee-haw! 

Food, food, food

Hello y'all!

Guess what I've been up to again? Eating more food! It's basically the ONLY activity we do when we hang out with friends. I have got to stop hanging out with these people; nothing gets digested in me. Hahaha. TMI.

Too be honest, we do a lot of cooking at home too but I never take pictures of what I make. I always attempt to make healthy foods at home when I can. I happened to pick up two of this cutie patootie drinks last week. It's a natural child's fruit drink with 100% fruits, no preservatives, colorings, additives, fat, or water and is gluten free! It's super pulpy so it's like a mini snack I guess you could say. I only bought it to try just because it's so cute! I'm a terrible shopper.

Last week, my friends and I helped Thomas move into his new place. Since I was with guys and they tend to always be hungry, we ended up going for Japanese food at Taiyo. Oh my goodness. We order so much food. We all had to over eat and then pack some home. It was pretty awesome here. The age dashi tofu was so yummy and crispy. I tend to be a bit picky about this and won't order this at very many Japanese restaurants because sometimes it can be super mushy before the dish is even served. We also ordered a few other appetizers such as the tako kimchi, seaweed salad and assorted tempura, as well as some simple rolls and special rolls. I think my favorite was the sunrise roll though I can't remember what's in it. Oops! 

After dinner, we grabbed some groceries at T&T for my friend and then headed to Walmart for some house essentials. Check out my crazy boots! They're my Juicy Couture moon boots. They look so ridiculous but super fun because I feel like I can jump in to puddles and just stomp all over people. =D 

I believe the next day we went to Ginger Beef as we were kind of showing a friend who's new to Calgary around town. We got some Chinese food and thank god, we went here because I was craving one of their dishes with egg tofu, scallops and eggplants. It smells so good and tastes amazing. 

Over the weekend I helped my brother bake some cupcakes because he wanted to... Note to self never bake with kids unless you are prepared to do ALL the work. Only towards the end I had fun as I got to decorate them.

 

Has anyone ever had this? I always get a kick out of the marble in this bottle. What can I say I'm easily amused. LOL. Number one loser. 

Anyways, signing off now. 

P.S., if anyone's got some amazing brussel sprouts recipe, please let me know! I'm probably going to make some in the next couple of days and I just don't know what do do with them. Thank you!

Chinese New Year 2013

Happy year of the snakes!

This year we celebrated my mother's birthday and Chinese New Year early. Since both dates were so close to each other we decide to kill 2 birds with one stone. Traditionally, the eve of Chinese New Year, families gather and have a big family reunion dinner, but since my family is scattered all over the world: 2 sisters in B.C., 1 sister in Germany, and a whole lot of aunts and uncles in Singapore, we could only celebrate it with my parents and two younger siblings. 

This year, my dad took us to Sakana in the Crowfoot area for some Japanese food. I really like this place for as a Japanese chain restaurant as I tend to find a lot of other Japanese chain restaurants plain and bland. I actually used to hate this restaurant because back when I was in high school, every so often my friends and I would go to the one in Chinatown for their sushi boat. It was alright, kind of boring and we only chose it because of our cheap budget.

But, over the last few years, my family started coming here as their go-to restaurant for Japanese food and my sister and I have been ordering their specialty rolls ever since. Let me tell you, their rolls are something! The sauces that they use are wonderful! There's different kinds of sauce that they drizzle over their rolls from avocado sauce, to kiwi sauce and mango. You would think fruit sauce with sushi is weird, but it works!

We only just converted my father to start eating their sushi approximately 2-3 visits ago. He's only used to his fancy sushi when we lived in Singapore and he's never liked eating sushi in Canada. So when he says he likes the rolls here, it's gotta be some special!

Our appetizers for this meal were the Large Assorted Tempura and the Takoyaki. They were both delicious. I mean hello? Deep fried batter food, yums. But remember now, only in small amounts. The tempura was super crunchy and the prawns weren't over cooked. And the takoyaki? Mmm, these cute little battered dumplings, with a chunk of octopus in it, topped with bonito flakes, mayo and takoyaki sauce, are exactly what I imagine I would find on the streets of Osaka.

Now here comes the stars of the meal. The salmon and tuna sashimi were fresh and at the perfect temperature to enjoy them. For the rolls, we chose the Cowboy Roll, House Roll, Philadelphia Roll, Dynamite Roll, Caterpillar roll, and some other roll with mango. All the rolls were a hit with my family. It was was delightful and fresh. They don't over fill the sushi with rice like some places do. It was the perfect amount. I think sushi has come a long ways from when I used to eat it as a child. It's just so fancy now, but it's okay with me because I still love it. 

I would personally stay away from the Caterpillar Roll as you really couldn't tell there was oysters in it. I think they tried to overcompensate with a crap load of rice in that. That one was miss, you really couldn't tell what is going on with that roll. I would not get the Cowboy Roll if you have a weak stomach to raw beef. Even though the beef is grilled lightly, it's still pretty raw. I actually love raw beef and it is probably my favorite roll out of all the rolls we order. So if you don't have a weak stomach and you're adventurous, try it! 

Top to bottom: Caterpillar Roll, Philadelphia Roll, Mango Roll, Dynamite Roll, Cowboy Roll and House Roll.

Mango Roll and Dynamite Roll

Cowboy Roll

House Roll

The service here tends to be pretty good every time that we go. Unfortunately this time we got a pretty terrible waitress who was rude. I think it's terrible when service people treat their customers with horribly, but expect to be tipped? Mmm, okay. 

I generally don't expect much from Asian waiters but she thought that we were just another typical Asian family that couldn't speak English and she would act so brash and make herself seem so high. I CANNOT stand it when we go to any type Western food and Caucasian waiters do this to us, but when another Asian does it to us... It's even more infuriating... My family may be Chinese but English is our first language. It's the only language my parents speak to me. My father was even educated in the UK. 

Anyway we survived dinner because the food was worth it. The waitress started clearing some dishes and came back with our bill to which I thought was really rude because we brought a cake in to celebrate my mother's birthday and she hadn't brought it out yet. I asked her about it and she's like 'Oh, I didn't know you were celebrating a birthday", to which she leaves to go grab it. This wasn't her fault as the hostess forgot to tell her. Generally, they're pretty on top of things like this when we bring cakes in to celebrate. 

They brought out their whole crew to sing my mother Happy Birthday in English and Japanese and took a Polaroid picture of her in their dress up clothes. LOL. I love how they celebrate big occasions here. It's fun. Afterwards, our waitress just became super nice and kept wishing my mother Happy Birthday non-stop. UM WHAT?! 

Though this time wasn't a pleasant dinner, we will DEFINITELY come back because it was 1 out of the multiple times we've been here. Plus we always get different waiters when we dine there. 

To conclude I want to wish everyone a Happy Chinese New Year and some well wishing phrases. 

Gong Xi Fa Cai! 

Shen ti jian kang! - Good health

Wan shi ru yi! - May things go as you wish.

My slowly growing pile of red packets.