March 8th 2013: Dinner at Kayuga, Boston

Today after work, I had a meetup dinner to go to at Kayuga, a Japanese restaurant in the Allston area of Boston.

When I arrived in the area and found a parking spot in the midst of all the snow, I was about an hour early, having left work early due to the heavy snowfall today which was way beyond the weather forecasters' predictions. I decided to take this time to explore the south campus of Boston University, located in Brookline. There weren't very many interesting buildings in this area, however.

It was hard going in the snow, but thankfully I still managed to get back to the restaurant on time. where others were already waiting. This bar restaurant is pretty nice, with a nice bar area.

We were only expecting a few people due to the weather, but eventually more and more people arrived, and we had barely enough room for everyone. We decided to split ordering into 2 groups, with my side ordering a Lychee Soju for starters, which wasn't too bad. I decided to drink only one shot though, as I would have to drive later.

We then each ordered an appetizer and a house special maki to share between the 7 of us. Among the dishes we shared were the Kalamari,

the Seafood Pancake,

the Fresh Tuna Ball (Torched mixture of Tuna, crabstick, spicy mayo, flying fish roe and tempura flakes, drizzled with teriyaki sauce),

the Hamachi Kama (Deep fried yellowtail collar served with spicy drated daikon, scallion, and ponzu sauce),

the Shrimp Tempura,

 and several maki including the Alan's Special Maki (Seaweed wrapped salmon, flying fish roe, avocado, and cucumber collectively deep fried with spicy mayo and teriyaki sauce covering), 

the Patriot Maki (Yellowtail, avocado, cucumber, flying fish roe, and scallion collectively deep fried with spicy mayo and teriyaki sauce covering), The Super Shrimp Tempura Maki (Eel, shrimp tempura, avocado, cucumber, flying fish roe, and spicy mayo),

the Scorpion Maki (Eel and avocado with shrimp, teriyaki sauce, and flying fish roe covering)

and the Tropical Maki (Mango, avocado, and cucumber with shrimp and spicy mayo covering).

All the maki were pretty decent, but not very filling when shared among 7 people. We decided to get more food soon after doing a Soju Bomb, a Korean version of the sake bomb. Unfortunately, we could not bang the table, so the shotglasses were just dropped into the beer and drunk.

We ordered more substantial dishes this time around, going for the Bulgogi,

Crazy Fried Rice (Pork, chicken, shrimp, egg, vegetable, basil and chili sauce),

and more seafood pancakes and scallion pancakes. With that, we were finally satisfied with our meal. The fried rice tasted a little weird in my opinion though.

After leaving the restaurant, we wanted to head to a new frozen yogurt place nearby, but when we got there, there were so many people in line that we decided to go somewhere else for a drink, heading to Patron's Mexican Kitchen and Watering Hole nearby instead.

Coincidentally, I had a Groupon to use at this place which also has several pool tables and was pretty full of people when we arrived, and I decided to give everyone else who came a pretty much free meal. I got the Mexican Dessert Pizza (flat bread pizza topped with Mexican cinnamon chocolate, peanut butter, roasted apples and bananas drizzled with dolche de leche sauce and streussel topping),

and the rest got Buffalo Border Hellfire Wings.

The pizza did not look too impressive when it arrived, but was pretty decent when I tried it. The wings were pretty average I guess, though.

With that, I had to leave early as I had to pick up my friend who had come from NYC at South Station, walking all the way back to my car parked outside Kayuga, then arriving at South Station just in time to pick my friend up.

He was hungry, so we headed into Chinatown to have soup dumplings at Gourmet Dumpling House, which were pretty decent.

After our quick and cheap meal, I brought him all the way back to my home for the night before heading out tomorrow to get food truck supplies.