Gastro Monkey // 美食家

Hi, Friends! Looks like it's been almost a year again since the last time I tried to update my blog! I have so much to catch up on, and it's overwhelming to think about all of the 2018 Japan/Taiwan posts, let alone the past few years. My last two posts were an attempt to catch up on the trip out to Hawaii January of 2020, while this and the upcoming ones are dining during a pandemic. At the time, we were torn on going out to eat (selfish), and if we should just keep staying home (paranoid). We really couldn't win. In the end, we decided that we should try to eat out and support the restaurants we want to see come out of the pandemic. To do this, we wore masks, and actually kept them on when we were not actively eating. In following various restaurants on Instagram, it is disheartening to see how people refuse to be considerate of others.   In deciding where to go, I took into account how much risk we were willing to take (this was just after having the first dose of Moderna...

Booknerd preface: If you are early to your reservation like I was, a few blocks down is Green Apple Books . It's a fun place to pass some time. Just don't get lost in there like I did and have to make a semi-run for it (ok, a light jog maybe?) to get to the restaurant in time.  That said, dinner was a few hours after watching the movie, Jimami Tofu , at the CAAM Festival at the Kabuki Theater in Japantown. The movie was about a Singaporean chef in Japan who loses sight of his cooking dreams after a bad breakup with a harsh food critic. He searches for this ex who walked out on him, in her hometown in Okinawa. Instead he finds her sister and father and learns about Okinawan cooking. It was overall very good, but it made me really question food critics. Can you critique if you can't do it yourself? This is why I agree with Andrew Zimmern on why Yelp is useless . That said, I feel self conscious about my reviews and want to offer just a view into places that you might ...