November 17th 2013: Lunch at Douzo, Dinner at Savin Hill Bar and Kitchen, Boston

After waking up early this morning, I decided to go do some hiking in the town of Sudbury, starting with the Memorial Forest. After parking at the parking lot near the Duck Pond, the path I took to explore the place is shown below in black.

The views of the pond itself were not that great though.

After heading to the railroad and back out to Dutton Road, then back to my car, I headed next to the Gray Reservation in town, where I decided to park at the lot on Old Lancaster Road near Hudson Road, and the path I took to explore this place and its ponds is shown below in black.

Once again, there wasn't anything of significance to see here.

From here, I headed to the Lincoln Meadows Conservation Land, which I have been to in the past.

This time, I headed to find the supposed viewpoints on the map, the path I took being shown below in pink.

Unfortunately, once again, there was nothing of much significance to see at either viewpoint.

What a disappointing day of hiking. It was at this point that my friend called me to go have lunch at Douzo, a pretty upscale Japanese restaurant in downtown Boston. I headed in that direction passing by the towns of Wayland

Mill Pond, 21 Plain Road

and Weston.

Rivers School Campus Center

Nonesuch Pond, 333 Winter Street

I somehow managed to find free parking (illegal) near the Japanese restaurant, where a few of my friends were already waiting when I arrived. We waited outside for quite a while as the hostess did not want to seat us unless all of us had arrived, but thankfully everyone arrived after a while, and we headed into the pretty nicely decorated place.

As always, I decided to go with the interesting stuff on the menu, getting the Uni Shooters (with ponzu sauce and quail egg),

the Rack of Lamb (with pesto sauce and broccolini)

and the Ebodai Usuzukuri (thinly sliced butter fish).

The uni shooters were simply heavenly, being drunk like a regular tequila shot, with no alcohol of course. The sliced fish was even better in presentation, coming with the complete skeleton and head, with the sashimi placed on top. It disgusted some of my dining mates though. All this made the lamb pale in comparison, but it was pretty good as well.

My friends got the Gyoza (pan fired pork raviolis),

the Beef Roll (Glazed with teriyaki sauce),

the Salmon Tartar (with taro chips),

the Vietnamese Spring Rolls,

the Hamachi Kama (broiled Yellowtail collar seasoned with sake),

the Tempura Udon (shrimp tempura in soup),

the Douzo's Lunch Set (chef's choice of sashimi, sushi, yakimono and agemono, served with salad, rice and fruit),

the Sashimi Lunch (assorted sashimi served with rice)

and the Dragon Roll (Sweet potato tempura wrapped with eel and avocado with touch of unagi sauce).

Of them, only the Salmon Tartar was pretty interesting. The yellowtail collar was pretty typical, as was the udon. The salmon sashimi was a little slimy and had a fishy aftertaste though. It even made my friend have food poisoning. I wasn't able to taste any of the other dishes though. I will give the place the benefit of the doubt, as fish is not delivered on Sundays, so naturally the fish wasn't as good. 


We weren't done yet though. we got all sorts of dessert, which were all very well presented. I got the Strawberry Cream Cake (strawberry and cream cheese mousse layered with white cake and chocolate sauce with vanilla ice cream),

while my friends got the Key Lime Pie Tart (with raspberry and apricot sauce topped with fresh berries),

the Banana Tempura (bananas flash fried in tempura batter topped with mandarin oranges, ginger syrup, chocolate sauce and candied walnuts with vanilla ice cream),

the Creme Brulee (mandarin orange brulee with dark chocolate squares and fresh raspberries)

and the Chocolate Lava Cake (with vanilla ice cream and apricot and raspberry sauce).

My cake was pretty good, and I managed to try the tart as well, and it met my standards as well.

After dessert, I decide to go have more dessert by walking to Fresh Mango, a froyo place nearby to use my Groupon for a 10-yogurt punch card.

This place is more of a you order and they make the yogurt for you. They had four flavors, namely Pecan, Salted Caramel, Mango and Original. Both the pecan and salted caramel tasted really weird, while the original was just so-so. I decided to go with the mango in the end, putting heath bars and gummi bears as toppings, which apparently to my friend are bad choices to go with mango.

The yogurt wasn't that great, so maybe she was right. Definitely not a froyo place I will go back to again. I don't know what to do with my punch card now though.

It started raining as we left the froyo place, so we ended up taking a cab back to the Back Bay T-Station, where we went inside for a bit to find my friend's car.

She dropped me off by my car, which thankfully had not been ticketed or towed, and I proceeded to the Ashmont T-Station in the rain to take a picture of it.

As I was still not too full from lunch, I decided to get even more food from Savin Hill Bar and Kitchen in the area. This place is a pretty nice looking bar restaurant.

For food, I decided to just get the Steak and Potato Flatbread (grilled sirloin, mashed Yukon Gold potatoes, bleu cheese, bacon).

Not bad at all in terms of presentation and taste, although I could barely eat the base as I became really full after a few bites of the juicy steak bits.

With that, I called it a day and headed home, glad I was finally able to check out Douzo with friends.