Monday, February 21, 2011

Oden



Raku
Las Vegas

Ahhhh oden, its comfort in a bowl. It's a very popular snack in Asia where you can find it in convenience stores or street vendors. Here in states, you'd have to hunt around Japanese izakaya style restaurants or Taiwanese tea places to get a bowl of comfort that's consist of clear konbu & bonito broth with added ingredients like daikon (radish), carrot/burdock/squid/veggie/plain fish cakes, hard boil egg,fried bean curd stuffed with mochi, intestines, pork rice cake.. etc.

Haven't had much of oden when I was little but as I grew older, I grew more attached to these kinds of street food that my dad despises. Rice, noodles, stir-fry are stables in Asia and it's considered as standards for meals but oden for dinner sounds like a good idea on a cold winter night..yah?

Big Eye Tuna Pizza



Yellowtail
Bellagio, Las Vegas
The concept is simple, the result is brilliant. Tortilla crust, sliced big eye tuna, truffle oil. Who knew it'd be so good? Crispy crust, creamy & fresh tuna along with fragrant truffle oil to give it a little omph.

When I was little, I rarely had any raw/cooked tuna. To me, tuna sounded like a type of fish from the can and tastes dry. My dad always order the yellowtail and rarely the tuna. Tuna reminds me of how raw fish wasn't as popular back then where people still have this fuzzy concept of sashimi/sushi. Look at where it's now, every 1/2 mile stretch of any mainstream road and there's a teriyaki/sushi place.