A QUICK TRIP HOME

One of the great things about living in the Bay Area is being able to take quick trips back home to LA. This is especially easy when Virgin America is running two for one deals on tickets. So to take advantage of the deal, we went down to LA last week so I could see my dentist. (I'm not joking. It was a long overdue appointment and my mommy paid for it).

The other nice thing is that I can get together with my family for a big family dinner every time I go down. (I think we had a total of 9 people this time). I wanted to have something that we normally don't have much of up here, which would be Japanese food and sushi, but I didn't want to take Tom back to Sushi King, since he'd already been there once before. So we chose to go to Yabu, a place famous for its house made soba and udon, but they also serve sushi and lots of other dishes.

Since we'd had a late lunch, I wasn't very hungry when we arrived at Yabu (we'd had lunch at the restaurant inside of Neiman Marcus, and then I did a little shopping at Barney's). So I just ordered a number of small plates. I started off with a an ordered of deep fried shisito peppers.

If you've ever had Spanish pimientos del padron, therse are very similar. But I didn't like the ones at Yabu. They were quite greasy and didn't have a clean, crispy flavor. Next my family ordered some dishes of oden- bascially a selection of fishcakes and veggies cooked in a fish broth.

It was actually pretty good, but I didn't fill up, because I was waiting for my chawan mushi to arrive.

A chawan mushi is basically an egg custard with flavored broth and different pieces of shrimp, fish and veggies in side. It warm and soft and one of my favorite things. I enjoyed it quite a lot. In the meantime, here's Tom's order of cold soba. He'd gotten a soba/sushi combination and I think he enjoyed both of them.

Overally, Yabu is just a really cute local Japanese restaurant with well prepared food. I really wish we had something like it up here- Tom and I would probably be visiting it all the time. But at least it's just a quick trip back home for great Japanese food.