Friday Night Dinner

After work, I went with Claire, a girl named Dana and Laura (I'm her replacement) to dinner. I don't remember the name of what we ate exactly, but it's something like sabu sabu. The meal is prepared is in 3 stages at your table. There is a big bowl in the center of your table with vegetable or beef broth in it. They heat it up and then the lady comes overs and starts to prepare the meal. She cuts up this rice cake thing (chewy, but good), these weird fish bone things (not good, but I did try one and oddly they don't really flavor the broth), cabbage, lettuce, acorn squash and 2 kinds of mushrooms. You cook that for a minute or so, then add pieces of thinly sliced, rolled up beef. There is a ladle and you serve yourself the veggie and meat pieces. When you start to run out, you add more to the bowl. There are a bunch of smaller bowls that each individual gets - dipping bowls really. The red stuff is sweet chili sauce and it's really good. The bowl to the right has a shredded cabbage salad with some crushed up peanuts and some really good dressing on it.

First course - veggies and beef

When you're done (or close to done) the lady comes over, scoops out the remaining veggies and divides them among the table. The she adds some more broth from a tea kettle type thing (she actually comes around and adds that throughout the meal too) to the central bowl. She adds dumplings and noodles for the second course. The noodles are really good - kind of doughy and sticky. The dumplings are little, multiple colors and have a strong scallion taste, but are also really good. She hands out the dumplings first, then you serve yourself the noodles.

Second course - dumplings

The last course was the weirdest. She takes some of the broth out, adds cooked rice, some more tiny chopped veggies (carrots and maybe celery) and an egg, and stirs it all together. It makes kind of a porridge, or really really think soup. Then she puts that in little bowls for each person. You use a spoon to each that, but chopsticks for the rest. The whole meal was really good, so I'm glad I decided to go and I'm gladest they decided not to get sushi.