Whew! The wedding was this past weekend and now I can finally say that I’m done with cake decorating for a while (I have another one to do in September.) I’ll show you the week-long process I went through to make it next time, but for now let’s wrap up our Boulder vacation with more delicious food!

If you know me, you know that I love Japanese food. Every time we go on vacation I try to find the best sushi restaurant in the area for us to try. This time, I found two that I could not choose between, so we went to both!

First up was Amu Izakaya. An izakaya is a casual restaurant that focuses on sake and beer with an extensive menu of small dishes, few of them being what most people would consider sushi.

We started off with a small bottle of sake which was served to us in this gorgeous earthenware pottery. Now I really want one of these for the house!

We ordered lots of small dishes to share, starting with a fluke sashimi and snapper carpaccio in yuzu cream with salmon roe. I’d never had fluke before but loved the clean lemony flavor. The snapper was soft and bright-tasting.

We had two kinds of Pacific oysters, one was Kumamoto but I can’t remember the name of the other. Both were excellent and still chilly on their bed of ice. We also shared some grilled eel with the skin still on. It was fatty and soft and delicious.

Then our favorites of the night, gindara misoyaki and a green tea soba with duck soup for dipping. Gindara (black cod) is my very favorite fish but I can rarely find it anywhere to prepare at home, so it’s become a treat I just have to have anytime we see it on the menu. This one was fall-apart perfect with it’s little ribbon of crispy skin and thin salty miso glaze.

The duck soup was out of this world with big chunks of duck floating in the rich broth. The soba were cold and springy, chewy and sweet. Easily the best soba dish I’ve ever had.

Finally, dessert. I’ve had mochi ice cream once before and didn’t care for it. Apparently I just had a bad one, because these little mochi ice creams were so addictingly good! There was only a thin skin of mochi incasing the creamy, not-too-cold ice cream in flavors of green tea, red bean, and pistachio. The pistachio was the clear winner for both of us.

Amu is the kind of authentic izakaya experience I wish we had in Atlanta. There are a few very good ones in Atlanta, but none as classy and traditional as Amu. Definitely check this one out if you have the chance.

Before I show you yet more Japanese food, here’s a few shots of one of the best lunches we had on the trip at a Latin restaurant called Aji.

We decided to share a bunch stuff because there were too many yummy things on the menu to choose from. We had a snapper ceviche with pickled red onions, a pork empanada with a corn masa crust, and duck taquitos with a spicy slaw. All of these were excellent and we had a hard time deciding wether to order something else or just get more of these!

We did eventually decide to split the enchiladas though, and it was definitely the right choice. They were filled with crisp grilled vegetables and topped with the freshest guacamole, salsa, and thin tomatoey enchilada sauce. I could have eaten ten of these if I weren’t so stuffed.

And onward to our sushi dinner! We hit up Sushi Tora after reading many reviews claiming that it’s the best sushi in Boulder

We started with the tempura mushrooms that were amazing. There were shiitakes, oyster, and a few enoki mushrooms, all lightly fried and served with bitter green tea for dipping. I could not stop eating them. Usually mushrooms soak up too much oil when fried, but these were still fresh and springy with a deep earthy flavor.

We got two snapper nigiri in a yuzu pepper vinaigrette that were outstanding. And any time monkfish liver (ankimo) is on the menu we have to have some. This was a particularly good bit of it too, firm but creamy with a slight peanut butter flavor.

Various maki rolls that were all really tasty and cut to the correct size. I have a pet peeve about sushi that is prepared too large to be eaten in one bite. Very happy to be able to inhale these as intended. 😉

Jeff got an uni gunkan. I can’t stand the stuff. I used to try it every time we went out for sushi hoping that I just hadn’t had the good stuff yet, but it always makes me gag. Tastes like ice cold runny peanut butter and fish flavored snot if you ask me.

And because why not, more mochi ice creams! This time we got blueberry and salted cherry blossom. The blueberry was crazy good, and the cherry blossom tasted mostly like vanilla but with a faint almost rose-like aroma in the back of the throat.

Sushi Tora definitely lived up to the hype. So glad we were able to find two excellent Japanese restaurants in Boulder.

Well that wraps up the trip. Overall, we enjoyed ourselves a ton and really liked Boulder, but we didn’t quite fall in love with it the way we did with the Pacific Northwest. I happen to love rainy gloomy weather, so a city like Seattle is actually a good match for me. It’s kinda funny to say that I would miss the rain in such a sunny and beautiful place as Boulder, but that’s just what I like.

Ok! I cannot wait to show you the wedding cake process from last week. I’m still editing the photos from the wedding, but I should be able to show it all to you soon.

If you had to pack up your life and move to another city of your choosing, where would you go?

June 19, 2012 Alayna Discussion 12 comments

It wasn’t all beer guzzling in Boulder, there was also tea!

Apparently, Boulder’s sister city is Dushanbe, Tajikistan. As a gift, the Dushanbe Tea House was assembled in Tajikistan then taken apart piece by piece and transported to downtown Boulder where it was reassembled amidst a garden of roses and a trickling stream.

As you may know, Jeff and I are kind of tea nerds, so we knew we’d be spending a long afternoon at this tea house for sure. It’s so hard to find tea shops that specialize in Chinese teas, they’re usually English “afternoon tea” type places with a sprinkling of heavily-flavored Assam and Ceylon teas, none of which we really care for. So we were excited to find that Dushanbe carries mostly Chinese teas of a high quality.

I loved seeing the authentic Persian-inspired painted ceilings and intricately-carved wooden columns.

And there was the constant sound of moving water from the Fountain of the Seven Beauties in the center of the tea house.

And the tea was excellent. Jeff had a Chinese black tea and I opted for a tea cocktail made from oolong, pineapple, and mango juices. Kind of like a tropical Arnold Palmer.

We also decided to have lunch there, starting with these curry-filled samosas with mango chutney and raita. So good!

Jeff had one of the most amazing dishes I’ve ever tasted. It was a thai panang beef curry with bok choy and shaved jicama, the richest and most flavorful curry ever. I could not stop stealing bites from him!

I ordered a salad of spinich and shaved pear in a pu-erh tea dressing with salmon and a bleu cheese-stuffed pear half. The stuffed pear was horribly underripe and hard as a rock, but I just scooped out the bleu cheese and ate the rest, which was an incredibly yummy salad without it.

We ended up splitting a pot of oolong together and digging into dessert. This was the most soft and delicious gingerbread I’ve ever had. It was accompanied by a drizzle of blood orange syrup and five spice whipped cream. Yum!

Dushanbe Tea House was incredible. I was worried that a place that specializes in tea couldn’t possibly also make great food, but WOW they do. The whole place felt very authentic and natural, not gimmicky and contrived as these types of theme places can be. I can’t recommend it highly enough if you’re ever in Boulder!

One place that was just ok was Chez Thuy, a Vietnamese place walking-distance from our rental. The free rice porridge was the best part of the meal!

The spring rolls were dry and flavorless, Jeff’s green curry was bland and full of watery vegetables, and my sampler plate of nori rolls, skewered beef, tempura shrimp, and stuffed chicken wing was way too heavy and strangley spiced.

I ended up taking mine back to the rental in hopes of snacking on it later, but it began to smell so atrociously within an hour that I never ended up eating it and it just stunk up the place for days. Skip Chez Thuy if you’re ever in town.

Back to the good stuff!

We caught up with some of our friends who moved out to Denver a while back and they could not stop raving about Snooze, a brunch place on Pearl St. that we’d passed a few times that was always crowded. We decided to take them up on their recommendation one morning and headed over expecting a long wait. Lucky for us, we were seated immediately on their lovely patio for prime people-watching!

I got the Blueberry Blossom pancakes: two super-fluffy and light pancakes studded with fresh berries and drizzled in local honey, topped with a sugary oat crumble and lavender butter! Best. Pancakes. Ever.

Jeff got the OMG French Toast which totally lived up to it’s namesake. Decadent when swirled in the vanilla cream sauce!

I wish we had a Snooze in Atlanta, I’d be waking up early to go there every weekend. There were so many things on the menu that I wanted to try!

Alright, one more Boulder recap to go. Tomorrow is the wedding and I’m rushing to get all this cake stuff done in time. Wish me luck!

June 15, 2012 Alayna Discussion 3 comments

We had plans to visit several breweries in and around Boulder during our trip, but sadly we were only able to make it to 2.

The first one was Avery Brewing. Jeff was really excited to take one of their tours and see how a real large-scale production operates, but we missed their only tour of the day by a half hour. He was pretty annoyed, since their website said no appointments were necessary and to come in any time for a tour.

Since we were already there (and it was quite a trek to get out there to begin with) we just saddled up to the bar in the tasting room and proceeded to get our drink on instead.

We each chose 2 samples to start with. I can’t remember what Jeff ordered, probably an IPA or two, but I remember I got one flavored with passion fruit and the other with Buddha’s hand citrus. I loved the citrus one, but the passion fruit beer was sour and disgustingly thick and fruity. I knew I wouldn’t like it but I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try something so unique.

We tried 4 more offerings, then we each chose our favorites and had a pint of each. Yeah, we drank a lot of alcohol that afternoon, but it was so much fun to get to try so many different things!

We had planned to try to get back to Avery later in the week to actually get a tour from them, but time got away from us and by the end of the week it seemed like a better use of our time to tour a different brewery rather than go back to the same one.

We took a bus northward out of the city to a little local brewery called Upslope.

It was in a little warehouse strip surrounded by mountain views.

They were cleaning the brewing area when we got there, so we decided to sample some beers while we waited for them to be ready to give a tour.

I think these were the pale ale, brown ale, and IPA. Every single one of these was fantastic! They were all right on point for style but each had a little special note of something to distinguish them from similar beers on the market.

We also tried a few variations that are not really our style just for fun. These were the barleywine, barrel-aged Belgian dark, and a lager.

The lager was very good for what it is. I just don’t typically like lagers because they all tend to taste the same, but this one had a really enjoyable bready aftertaste that bulked it up a bit. I would have loved the Belgian dark a few years ago when I was really into them, but now I find all beers of this style too sweet. It was very well made though. But the barleywine was definitely not my cup of tea. It’s thick and unbearably sweet. Again, well made but not something I could actually drink a full glass of.

After a couple of hours of sampling beer and chatting up the locals, the bartender was ready to give us a tour.

One of the coolest things was their canning machine. Upslope only uses cans for their beers, not only to reduce light damage to the product but also because cans have a lighter impact on the environment. Environmental impact is one of their greatest concerns as a company and it reflects in everything they do.

Barrels for aging Belgian beers…

Jeff really enjoyed getting to see all of their brewing equipment and learning a little about brewing on a large scale. I could just see him making a mental wish list of all the pretty brewing equipment he wants now. 😉

And we’d both had so much to drink that I thought I might be hallucinating the family of groundhogs we saw on the way out!

The whole lot was full of them, and they were screaming at us because obviously we’re giant vultures come to snatch up their babies!

Anyway, I wish we got to tour one of the larger breweries in the area, but I’m glad we got to see what we did.

Do you have a favorite brand or brewery for beer?

June 13, 2012 Alayna Discussion 7 comments