Friday night date night!
2023-Sep-09, Saturday 22:34![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
Friday afternoon, my father showed up and picked up Laila and left to take her back for a grandparents' weekend (about which more later), and ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee and I were left to our own devices. I had taken the afternoon off and we originally planned to go do something in the afternoon as well, but sashagee didn't want to feel rushed, so I made reservations at a "dark, romantic" restaurant per her request and at 5:15 we left to head to the L and arrived at our destination just in time: Nomonomo Japanese-Pub + Grill in Logan Square.
I haven't been to an izakaya in years, ever since Izakaya Mita closed after the owner tragically died of cancer in his forties, so I'm glad thatsashagee picked it! It was dark (though I'm not sure about romantic) and we arrived just in time for happy hour, so I immediately ordered the sake and sashagee ordered a beer, then we looked at the rest of the menu:
Shishito peppers with bonito.
Shishito peppers are one of those trap peppers, where most of them are mild but every once in a while you get a really spicy one. We got lucky on this plate, though, and none of them were any more spicy than a bit of mild tang. I don't think I've had bonito with peppers before, and it was delicious. I've got a big pack of bonito in the pantry that I keep forgetting to use but I really need to bring it out.
Yakionigiri.
Nothing I ordered had rice in it and there wasn't any ochazuke on the menu but I really wanted some rice, so what to do? Get an onigiri! It was fried enough that the sauce stuck the rice together and made it crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, and coupled with the sautéed mustard greens it was delicious.
Mentaiko udon.
This was the highlight of my meal. Mentaiko 明太子 is spicy fish roe. It's very popular in Japan but for obvious reasons it's pretty hard for me to get here--getting Americans to eat fish at all seems weirdly hard, and fish eggs are a step above that, and spicy is a step even beyond that--so while I thought about getting the fish itself, I decided on this. It was creamy, spicy, with chewy udon, and I would probably come back here just for that.
Matcha chuhai.
Chuhai is an abbreviation of "shōchū highball" so there's not a lot of alcohol in it, but after the sake I just wanted something tasty and I got it. They put green tea liqueur in here but also some match and it was lovely and smooth.sashagee got the barley tea chuhai and it was good, but after trying mine drink, she said she should have ordered that one.
Not pictured: the kara-age. The happy hour special had its own specific kara-age that we got and it was amazing, just fantastic, and then we wanted more kara-age so we ordered the normal menu kara-age and it...had bones? It was basically just American fried chicken except with kara-age skin. We ate it, but we had to be careful andsashagee had to use her hands because she doesn't have as much practice with chopsticks as I do--I ate it with chopsticks, which makes me want to try eating fried chicken with chopsticks to keep my hands clean.
The only problem was the service, which was abysmal. We were there for almost two hours, and much of it was waiting around for someone to ask if we wanted more drinks. Getting the check and paying itself took almost half an hour! I would go back because the food was delicious but I'd definitely make sure to block off the appropriate amount of time.
After a mile walk down Milwaukee we arrived at the Stan Mansion, just set among other houses on Kedzie, but with (fake) candles set up outside. The last Fever concert I attended had someone come out in person and give a brief speech advertisement for Fever itself, which was weird because we had obviously heard of the company since we were at their event, but at that time they were trying to establish themselves and I think had only been founded in the last year. Now they're years old and had survived the Plague Years, but we still got the pitch, though thankfully only as a pre-recorded advertisement. Once that was over, the musicians came out:
The concert was shorter than I expected, only an hour, and it only covered the console games with none of the handheld titles. They started with the overworld theme from The Legend of Zelda--perfect for a string quartet since the NES had four sound channels--continued with the palace theme from Zelda 2, and moved on through the other games. The song I was most looking forward to was the Gerudo Theme from Ocarina of Time, but I just didn't like the interpretation where the violinist plucked the strings--it was no Spanish guitar. The best song was the opening theme from Wind Waker, perfectly designed for a quartet.
They ended with a short field medley from Breath of the Wild, a game whose music sounds like nonsense when played by a string quartet, and then after they set down after the bows, someone off to our right yells out "Spirit Tracks!" and much to my amusement, that turned out to be the encore song--the Super Smash Brothers arrangement of the overworld theme from Spirit Tracks, which they called "Full Steam Ahead."
They skipped Twilight Princess, which was kind of sad because I was really hoping to hear the Western showdown song ("Hidden Village"), and they hadn't rehearsed together quite as much as they should have because I heard more than a few instances where someone played the wrong note and had to quickly correct to the right one. But like when I went to go see Vivaldi's Four Seasons by another candlelit string quarter, it was a lot of fun.
I wish they had had more comfortable chairs, though.sashagee told me she kept getting distracted by the people who were shuffling in their seats.
sashagee and I were left to our own devices. I had taken the afternoon off and we originally planned to go do something in the afternoon as well, but sashagee didn't want to feel rushed, so I made reservations at a "dark, romantic" restaurant per her request and at 5:15 we left to head to the L and arrived at our destination just in time: Nomonomo Japanese-Pub + Grill in Logan Square.I haven't been to an izakaya in years, ever since Izakaya Mita closed after the owner tragically died of cancer in his forties, so I'm glad that
sashagee picked it! It was dark (though I'm not sure about romantic) and we arrived just in time for happy hour, so I immediately ordered the sake and sashagee ordered a beer, then we looked at the rest of the menu:Shishito peppers with bonito.
Shishito peppers are one of those trap peppers, where most of them are mild but every once in a while you get a really spicy one. We got lucky on this plate, though, and none of them were any more spicy than a bit of mild tang. I don't think I've had bonito with peppers before, and it was delicious. I've got a big pack of bonito in the pantry that I keep forgetting to use but I really need to bring it out.
Yakionigiri.
Nothing I ordered had rice in it and there wasn't any ochazuke on the menu but I really wanted some rice, so what to do? Get an onigiri! It was fried enough that the sauce stuck the rice together and made it crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside, and coupled with the sautéed mustard greens it was delicious.
Mentaiko udon.
This was the highlight of my meal. Mentaiko 明太子 is spicy fish roe. It's very popular in Japan but for obvious reasons it's pretty hard for me to get here--getting Americans to eat fish at all seems weirdly hard, and fish eggs are a step above that, and spicy is a step even beyond that--so while I thought about getting the fish itself, I decided on this. It was creamy, spicy, with chewy udon, and I would probably come back here just for that.
Matcha chuhai.
Chuhai is an abbreviation of "shōchū highball" so there's not a lot of alcohol in it, but after the sake I just wanted something tasty and I got it. They put green tea liqueur in here but also some match and it was lovely and smooth.
sashagee got the barley tea chuhai and it was good, but after trying mine drink, she said she should have ordered that one.Not pictured: the kara-age. The happy hour special had its own specific kara-age that we got and it was amazing, just fantastic, and then we wanted more kara-age so we ordered the normal menu kara-age and it...had bones? It was basically just American fried chicken except with kara-age skin. We ate it, but we had to be careful and
sashagee had to use her hands because she doesn't have as much practice with chopsticks as I do--I ate it with chopsticks, which makes me want to try eating fried chicken with chopsticks to keep my hands clean. The only problem was the service, which was abysmal. We were there for almost two hours, and much of it was waiting around for someone to ask if we wanted more drinks. Getting the check and paying itself took almost half an hour! I would go back because the food was delicious but I'd definitely make sure to block off the appropriate amount of time.
After a mile walk down Milwaukee we arrived at the Stan Mansion, just set among other houses on Kedzie, but with (fake) candles set up outside. The last Fever concert I attended had someone come out in person and give a brief speech advertisement for Fever itself, which was weird because we had obviously heard of the company since we were at their event, but at that time they were trying to establish themselves and I think had only been founded in the last year. Now they're years old and had survived the Plague Years, but we still got the pitch, though thankfully only as a pre-recorded advertisement. Once that was over, the musicians came out:
<The concert was shorter than I expected, only an hour, and it only covered the console games with none of the handheld titles. They started with the overworld theme from The Legend of Zelda--perfect for a string quartet since the NES had four sound channels--continued with the palace theme from Zelda 2, and moved on through the other games. The song I was most looking forward to was the Gerudo Theme from Ocarina of Time, but I just didn't like the interpretation where the violinist plucked the strings--it was no Spanish guitar. The best song was the opening theme from Wind Waker, perfectly designed for a quartet.
They ended with a short field medley from Breath of the Wild, a game whose music sounds like nonsense when played by a string quartet, and then after they set down after the bows, someone off to our right yells out "Spirit Tracks!" and much to my amusement, that turned out to be the encore song--the Super Smash Brothers arrangement of the overworld theme from Spirit Tracks, which they called "Full Steam Ahead."
They skipped Twilight Princess, which was kind of sad because I was really hoping to hear the Western showdown song ("Hidden Village"), and they hadn't rehearsed together quite as much as they should have because I heard more than a few instances where someone played the wrong note and had to quickly correct to the right one. But like when I went to go see Vivaldi's Four Seasons by another candlelit string quarter, it was a lot of fun.
I wish they had had more comfortable chairs, though.
sashagee told me she kept getting distracted by the people who were shuffling in their seats.
