January 25th 2014: Badminton and Karaoke

This morning, I had a badminton session in Waltham, so I decided to get breakfast at the Spot Cafe, a small breakfast place at 385 Main Street in the town of Watertown. I decided to get a cup of Hot Chocolate

and Luba's Omelet (three egg omelet with pastrami and Swiss cheese, served with toast and home fries).

The omelet was pretty good, although you can't really go wrong with this sort of thing. The dessert menu looked interesting, so I got the Blueberry Crumb Cake,

but it was a great disappointment as it was not even in the least bit crisp, and tasted weird as well. Guess I'm not coming back here again.

Badminton and table tennis was fun as always, and lunch was at Mulan again. This time, we ordered a few new dishes. One was a special with the Lunar New Year coming up soon, called the Three Color Platter, consisting of Homemade Chinese Sausage,  Five Spice Roast Beef and Hot and Spicy Beef Tripe.

The sausage was a little strong in ammonia flavor, though still good to eat. The tripe was excellent as well, though a little spicy. Other new dishes we got were the Eggplant with Basil,

the Ma Bo Beancurd,

the Shredded Pork with Dry Beancurd,

the Sauteed Shrimp with Chinese Squash,

the Braised Pork Shin in Brown Sauce,

and the Lo Mein.

Once again, an excellent meal to boot.

I had to pick up a friend to order her birthday cake from Oakleaf Cakes in Boston, but I had some time before that, so I headed to Dedham to see a few places,

Weld Pond, 151 Meadowbrook Road

including an old powderhouse on 147 Ames Street that required a little bit of climbing to get to it,

before going to pick her up.

I can't reveal too much about how the cake will look like, but it's going to be awesome, to say the least. It cost a bomb as well, as can be expected.

From here, it was on to dinner at Ittoku Izakaya, a Japanese yakitori place at 1414 Commonwealth Avenue in the Brighton area. Parking here was really hard to find, although the place does offer valet parking for a buck. The place itself is decently decorated, although we had to wait over an hour before getting a table because no advanced booking is done here. In my opinion, it was worth the wait though, as most of the food we got was actually pretty good, although my friends got some stuff that weren't very satisfactory. I got the Takowasa (Raw Octopus marinated with Fresh wasabi), 

the Sake Harasu (Broiled Salmon Belly),

the Sunagimo (Gizzard) and Bonjiri (Chicken Tail) yakitori,

and finally the Ittoku Ramen (Ramen noodles in a beef bone broth with toppings), which pretty much everyone else at the table got as well as it is the only ramen dish sold here.

The octopus was interestingly tasty with the wasabi sauce, while the fish oil from the salmon belly was simply amazing. The yakitori were delicious too, although I've had better ramen. Among other stuff my friends got, I was able to try the Salmon with Spicy Mayo Yakitori, the Salmon Sashimi, the Matsu Miso (Beef Stomach and Intestines with miso flavored sauce),

the Agedashi Tofu (Deep fried tofu in light fish broth with scallions and grated radish),

the Hamachi Kama (Grilled Yellowtail Collar),

and the Big Yaki Onigiri (Giant grilled rice ball basted with soy sauce).

The beef stomach and intestines were pretty good, as was the tofu, which had mushroom flavor in the broth. The salmon yakitori wasn't too bad either. However, the onigiri was disappointingly plain though, and the yellowtail was not cooked enough as well.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good dining experience, just expect to wait when you come with a group of friends.

From here, it was on to Limelight Stage + Studios in the downtown area for some karaoke. I have been here once a long time ago, not liking the vibe here very much. According to my friend, the management has changed, hopefully for the better. Unfortunately, they messed our reservation up, and we ended up waiting an hour before we could get a room. This place has a touchscreen system to select songs, which meant that everyone had to go up to it to search for their song, which was pretty inconvenient in my opinion, and to top it off, the song selection was pretty limited. Thankfully, we resolved this issue by appointing someone (me) to go look for songs my friends wanted, and I also figured out how to change the sequence of songs in the queue. At the end of it all, we had a pretty good time, although we ended pretty late because we had started late. It was still a fun day of hanging out with friends though.