Yume-Ya!

Ok, now that I've written about my stresses, I can write about my first, but certainly not my last!, Izakaya experience. Wil and I met up with two other couples down at Yume-Ya in Sunnyvale for dinner. One of those dinners that I love that lasts almost 2 hours and includes the waitresses coming with multiple dishes and taking aways multiple dishes, several bottles of cloudy Japanese liquor that comes in a pink bottle.

So Izakaya is a type of Japanese dining that involves eating small plates of food whilst consuming sake. I'm fairly certain what we were drinking was not sake, but we did eat many small plates of food:

• We arrived to spicy fish balls waiting at our seats


• Spinach with sesame sauce


• Lotus root stuffed with shrimp


• Shrimp stuffed mushrooms


• Cuttlefish (squid) in butter sauce


• Some sort of incredible pork stew


• Bitter melon (it is not named so in jest) with (sweet succulent) pork belly


• Pumpkin Croquettes


• Snail skewers (the only really disappointment of the evening)


• Pickled Vegetables (far different from the kim chi type of Korean cuisine, these were mild and delicate, but had enough unique vegetables that I was still intrigued, until that last unidenified horrible green)


• Chicken Cutlet with Ponz sauce


• Halibut sashimi with ponzu sauce - this was awesome. Paper thin slices for you to roll around two types of radish bits


• Dessert - panne cotta, yes, I know bizarre, but wonderfully creamy with a strongly flavored caramel topping

Thank you to my friends for introducing me to this place and this type of dining!