a success!

so it only took us five winters to find a really good sushi place- LOL- actually we have found a couple of places along the way that were fine but last night we found the place we have been looking for- and oddly enough it isn't a sushi place- it is a fusion Thai-Japanese place.  Living in a city of more than 8 million people we have a number of BYO sushi places in the neighborhood that are really just sushi and maybe a tiny bit of cooked food (tempura/miso soup etc..)

the last few years we have been carrying in from the Lawrence Fish Market but you have to plan early - and if we don't plan - and then have a "taste" for sushi we usually have gone to Ora Sushi on Clark in Andersonville or what is known as Sushi Mike (LOL) Tanoshii Sushi also on Clark in Andersonville (our neighborhood in Chicago- about 1.5 miles north of Wrigley Field along the lake front -for those who don't know Chicago neighborhoods)

so when you go to a community of 50,000 from 8 million there are some adjustments - and among them - perhaps the biggest among them is the lack of truly ethnic restaurants- we are still working on good Thai and good Mexican - Bosnian is a complete loss- Vietnamese is very iffy (one place, with decent Pho but that doesn't even have two of the most common dishes in Vietnamese cuisine- banh mi and banh xeo)

photo- wikimedia commons

photo kent Wang (Austin TX)

and forget about Peking Duck like we have just around the corner at Sun Wah BBQ....

or really good Greek food (Tarpon Springs is an hour hike up the coast) - one of the first Thai places we tried here served crab rangoon with orange cheese and no white pepper! YUCK! (made us long for Opart Thai House on Western Avenue...)

so there is no way you are going to come here and have a great meal of Cevapcici- (Sarajevo on Lawrence Avenue in Lincoln Square)

or soup dumplings Shanghai style (Ed's Potsticker House on S. Halsted)

--- but on the other hand you can't get a good grouper sandwich for hundreds of miles from our Chicago home- LOL and stone crab claws cost and arm and a leg (so to speak- LOL)

but being huge sushi fans (our first date was a sushi place where we were the only "round eyes" in there - or as they say in SE Asia - farang) ...LOL - we were questing for good sushi and we found it last night at Pacific Rim on Hillview in SRQ...

  

these are photos from their website- I didn't take any pictures I was having a good sushi dinner! Which did include the fabulous Sashimi Salmon and Sashimi White Tuna (both shown on the left side of the boat) and Sashimi Toro (excellent!)- so that one is handled- and we will keep on the quest for the others- so far Chinese is a wash out- the best we have at this point in a "local chain" called Yummy House but at least we haven't been reduced to PF Chang's franchise yet....LOL

ever onward...

I hope to post in the next day or so- about the terrorist Spaniards from the Age of Exploration from my Florida Maritime class (apparently beheading and clubbing folks to death was an acceptable practice in the name of the Catholic god back in 1556)... in the immortal words of Monty Python "no one expects the Spanish Inquisition"