Birthday Time!

Last weekend was Matt's birthday! We celebrated by doing taxes most of the day (boo) and then going to eat at a restaurant we hadn't been to before - Syun Izakaya (yay). Izakaya is a kind of Japanese restaurant that's a lot like a pub - it's casual, you generally go there to drink and eat, and it has non-fancy food. We were really excited to go, since most Japanese restaurants we've been to have just been sushi places - as if every Italian restaurant only served pasta!

We were just slightly overwhelmed by the menu! There were so many delicious-looking things, so many dishes we've always thought looked delicious but hadn't been able to try. We didn't really know where to start, so we just kind of ordered a bit of everything. We later figured out that you generally start with the most delicate flavors and work up to the stronger stuff, but our scattershot method worked out just fine.

The food was absolutely delicious! The izakaya method of serving is really nice - instead of ordering everything at once, you order a little bit at a time and the servers bring it out as you order. We had sake, salad, savory soft tofu & eggplant in miso sauce (above), a fried tofu dish, and sushi.

We agreed that it was some of the best sushi we'd ever had, ever! It put our usual sushi place to shame. The only reason we won't totally give up our usual is that this amazing restaurant is much farther away from home! It's in Hillsboro, which is a half an hour's drive west of our apartment. I feel really spoiled for thinking that's far away - in New York, thirty minutes was a short subway ride! We'll definitely be back to this place before too long, though - its menu is too big to not explore further!