2015-04-25, ABC Kids Dinner Out

We had a fun evening at a kushikatsu place last night.  Kushikatsu is pieces of different meat, vegetable, or fish that are skewered, breaded with panko and deep fried.  Depending on what it is you dip it in a little salt, ponzu (soy sauce and citrus or vinegar) or Japanese sauce (like tonkatsu sauce, sort of a combination of worstershire and ketchup.  We were served things like beef, shrimp, asparagus, eggplant, mountain yam, shitake mushroom and some other things I don't remember at the moment.

The restaurant.

Takakosan & Kyokosan from the Nagahama office, Kelly from FL/AZ,
Caleb from PA, Will from CT.  You can see raw cabbage leaves in
front of everyone and scallions in a 'vase' on the table.  Those are both
to eat in between the different skewers.

Mayumisan, Sawakosan, Pamela, Kosuke, Emily from Ohio (she's the one
who also worked at English Square in Tokushima) and Erikachan.

These were whole stalks of asparagus.  Each item was fried and brought over
one by one with instructions on what to dip it in for the best flavor.

 We had ordered a 'course' dinner so we were served the same things.  Except for the choices of appetizer and ending which could be hot or cold noodles, or rice in different forms.  I choose cold noodles.  It was also 'all you can drink' time.  Most of the others had beer.  I tried a sudachi (Tokushima's famous citrus) cocktail (which I believe was mostly juice) and plum wine with sparkling water.  Both were good but for the sake of calories I switched to oolong tea after that!

Little green tea ice cream cylanders - about 2 bites each - perfect.

I haven't eaten that much of anything at one time in quite a while, never mind all that fried food, so I went to sleep and woke up feeling a little sluggish.  But it was very nice to meet and get to know everyone.  The woman next to me makes plum wine and dried plums with plums (Japanese apricots really) that are given to her.  I was planning to try and make those things this year so hopefully we can get together and do that.  She also does ikebana so she will keep me informed about shows and special events.  Unfortunately it is too far away for me to take the classes.