February 19th 2014: Dinner with a Friend at Roka, Boston

Today after work, I had arrangements for dinner with a friend at Roka, a relatively new Japanese restaurant in the South End area of Boston.

This place was pretty empty when we arrived, but was probably due to the heavy snow that just fell earlier today. It is pretty nice inside in terms of decor though.

My friend and I had $70 to spend, so we had to order a lot of food for it. For appetizers, we got the Tuna Dumpling,

made of raw tuna filled with a seafood salad, and the Seaweed Salad with Spicy Tuna.

The salad was good, though you can't really go wrong with seaweed. The dumpling was the really interesting dish, especially with how they were able to use raw tuna as the "skin" for the dumpling.

For food, we went for the Enoki Mushroom with Prime Rib Eye Iron Pot,

and the Seafood Ishiyaki (Assorted seafood including crabstick, scallop, shrimp, salmon, and soft shell crab),

along with the Lobster Tempura Maki (Lobster Tempura, mango, avocado, Jalapeno and Tobiko, wrapped with soybean paper, served with spicy mayo and teriyaki sauce),

which came with a side salad and miso soup.

The maki was pretty disappointing, and it did not even feel like any lobster was present at all. The ishiyaki was pretty good, although nothing special I guess. The iron pot was the best dish of the night, hands down, with interesting balls of vermicelli hidden inside as well.

Overall, I would give this place a recommend, although there are better places nearby, though much more expensive.