Haruki East on Wayland Ave. is going DOWN hill.

Yes, I said it! They are going down, down, down. Their sushi is no longer thick and fresh. The food in the bento boxes are tiny seriously, I'm not joking. I ordered a beef teriyaki bento box which comes with California rolls and the beef. The beef was smaller than a 2x3 post-it. The broccoli didn't have the sauce that it usually had, and to top it off it took TOO long to get to our table. Our sake (salmon), sweet shrimp, and yellow tail came after we fished our soup/salad, but I swear we waited over 20 minutes for our damn boxes to get out. It was 1pm and I was starving!

Anyway, I also forgot to mention that the fruit that came with the box was NOT fresh. 4 day old container fruit at the market would have tasted a lot fresher than what they had in our box. I usually eat everything when I'm hungry, but not the unfresh fruit! For that much at least let us leave feeling a little satisfied. Geez. We need a new spot. The good about this place is that it's so close to our house! Oh well the salmon really satisfied my sushi cravings for Saturday morning. Unfortunately they didn't have salmon skin, WTF!

The next day I went to Ruffles and had their pancake special. The price was very special. For $5.95 ($6.43 plus tax) I got a small cup of OJ, coffee (FREE refills), 2 soft fluffy pancakes, 2 sausages, 1 egg (over easy please!) and some home fries. Can't beat that! They serve brunch until 1pm. Word of advice, DO NOT arrive after 12pm because you might not get a seat. It's always packed after 12pm on Sundays. (Note if you're a fan of eggs Benedict or corn beef has I'll suggest you NOT order these. We ordered that last time and it was not all that, it was okay, just not great compared to Cafe Orlin's in NY or Zackary’s in Santa Cruz (I'm not sure if they're still there)).

Don't shoot me, but Trinity Brewhouse was BAD, not bad cool, but bad BAD!

Yes, it was bad. I ordered the Trinity burger and couldn't eat it. There was blue cheese in it. I like blue cheese, but not in my burger. That's my fault for not paying attention. One thing I can really complain about are the fries, they were bad. I'm not sure how to explain it; you'll have to eat them to find out. Okay fine, they were thin, but not crunchy. Some fries were uncooked. $9.95, not worth it! Next time I feel like getting a burger I'll head over to the Kartabar on Thayer. It's only $7.00 for a bigger and better tasting burger.

The Trinity Nachos were okay. We liked the chips because they were large and crunchy, but the whole thing lacked flavor. I think pickled Jalapenos would have added more flavor instead of Fresh Jalapenos. Overall the nachos were the best thing we had besides the PC Pilsner.

M-- got the grilled sausage platter. The Red bliss mashed potatoes tasted like they were sitting in water after they were mashed. Bad, bad, bad. And the thing was lacking flavor.....salt. The platter came with two sausages. One of the sausages tasted like extremely salty hot dog and the other just tasted expired. The sauerkraut was not fresh, it was not sour, it was all brown and tasteless. For $13.99 we got a lot for this platter, but too bad it didn't taste good. We were extremely hungry so we ate all the nachos, but didn't touch the mash potatoes after 2 bites. I eat anything even if it's bad because it's a waste of money not to eat it. So we packed half of the burgers, all the fries, and a sausage. On our way home I didn't feel so great so I might NOT eat the left over after all. We'll see. People eat anything when they're hungry. I think we should have ordered the fish legs. At least it would have been different.

Oh well, we wanted to try a new place; we did and didn't like it.

Go here for beer, not the food. If you want beer and food, I suggest going to RiRa (a few blocks away). Plus, RiRa has 3 plasma screen TV’s and on certain nights they have pub trivia or a show.

Best place for a burger:

Kartabar
284 Thayer St.
Providece, RI 02906

I always order the Kartaburger(again only $7.00, dinner!). And M-- usually orders Gnocchi Diablo con filet mignon-$13.50(dinner!). We've tried some of their specials and other pasta dishes, but we like this one better. The only complaint about the Kartabar is that their cocktail drinks are water downed, I think they water down their wine too if that's possible).

Hibachi Steak House in Norwood, MA. YUMMY and CHEAP!

Hey folks, we had our company Christmas lunch yesterday. The Boston team came down and we went up to Norwood for lunch at a place call Hibachi Steak House. We went there last year and everyone loved it so we went back again.

The food is pretty cheap compared to Haruki. I had the pleasure of introducing sushi to V--. She's never had sushi or faux sushi (California Rolls, etc). I didn't order anything too wild. I ordered the following sushi for us to taste: Sake (salmon), Unagi (eel), Toro (tuna belly), Habachi (yellowtail), and the caterpillar roll. I was so happy that she was so open minded. (I keep trying to coerce K-- to try some eel since the eel was not raw, but she wouldn't do it). She's never used a chopstick either so I had to tell her how. I hold my chopstick incorrectly, but I told her as long as the food doesn't fall that it was fine. I showed her how to use the soy sauce (low sodium soy sauce, which I told her that Asian's don't use that. They use the real thing, but I didn't want to bother asking for regular soy sauce). I showed her how to mix the wasabi into the soy sauce. Then we ate the sushi piece by piece. I told her that one way the soy sauce/wasabi can be applied to the sushi is by dipping a piece of ginger into the sauce and then rubbing the sushi or you can just dunk the sushi into the sauce, which is what we did. After we ate each piece I told her that she should eat a piece of sweet ginger to wash down the taste of the previous fish. Her favorite sushi out of the few that we had was the sake (salmon) and unagi (eel), which I also love too! I told her I was proud of her being so brave. She totally just dove in. She said that if she was going to try sushi she wanted to go with someone who knew something about it so that she won't order the wrong thing and decide that she hates sushi for life. That's a good way of looking at things! That's awesome. One thing that I forgot to order was salmon skin. I am so mad. I should have order California roll for her too, just so she can taste what faux sushi is like. I also ordered some edamame ($3.75, not a bad price). She liked that too. I think we fished one plate by ourselves.

For the main course we both ordered the samurai special. This dish consists of fillet mignon and shrimp with the choice of white rice or fried rice. Japanese people traditionally don't eat fried rice so I ordered white rice for the both of us. I think we were the only ones there who ate white rice. I like Japanese white rice more than fried rice. I explained to her the difference between Japanese rice and Thai rice and Chinese rice. We also talked about yellow sticky rice, which is a South East Asian thing (this was brought up because we were talking about her Laotian friend (FYI, people from Laos (Laos is in between Vietnam and Thailand).

I can't stop thinking about the food we had yesterday. Right now I'm trying to figure out if I want to get pancakes or sushi. The only reason why I would want pancakes is because it's a lot cheaper than getting sushi. hmmmm. They cooked the food in front of us! This year we didn't get the show they did for us last year. They only do the volcano, shrimp and knife tricks for dinner. Dinner is a little pricy so I guess that's why they have to entertain their customer. Oh well. The fillet mignon was cooked perfectly, medium well. The shrimp was tasty too. The order also came with onion soup (not into onion soup so I skipped that part) and vegetables. $12.50 for all of this. Not bad at all. You get more compared to a bento box at most restaurants. Please I ordered the most expensive thing on the lunch menu.

For drinks we got this thing called the Flaming Volcano. I think some people call it a Scorpion bowl. The drink is huge so V-- and I shared one (only $10.75). After that we ordered a cherry blossom. The drink is very cute, but not as tasty.

If you click on the title you can see the restaurant menu.



Hibachi Steak House
315 Morse St.
Norwood, MA 02062-5034

Haruki East on Wayland Ave.

300 pound halibut

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Last night we went to Haruki East for dinner.

I was being cheap so I decided to stay away from sushi. Choice number one was Kibe Beef: NY steak with mash potatoes and seasonal greens, $14.00. Yes, I know it's not "Japanese" but I like this dish. At the last minute I decided to go with "The Catch of the Day." Grilled halibut.

I should have stuck with my first choice because the halibut wasn't that great. The wasabi sauce that came with the dish was interesting, but the fish was still lacking salt. I poured some soy sauce on top of the fish, but that didn't do it any good.

I didn't like the fish, but I ate everything because I told myself that the fish was healthy and that it will fill me up. Oh well, next time I'll spend an extra $5 or more for some sushi (fyi, California Roll is not sushi, it's faux sushi. I hate it when people think they've had sushi, but they really didn't).

I like this place, but I don't think I'll ever order "The Catch of The Day" again.

Positive things about the place:

1) The atmosphere is really nice (they're always busy at night esp. on Fridays so make reservations!)

2) I like their fried ice cream esp. when it comes with blackberries. The last time I had it they served kiwi with it--Hate it.

3) The sushi's not bad

4) I heard the Red Snapper Cheek was very taste.

Negatives:

1) It's a little on the pricy side so if you can make it before 3pm lunch is a better bargain
2) The price (I hope you got my point).

p.s

I didn't feel so great when we got home from Haruki, but I'm fine now.

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And I don't always eat good or expensive food. Today I had a Celeste personal pan pizza (with sausage). Their "Zesty Chicken" is much better and it's lower in calories. $0.67 Yes, 67 cents, you can't beat that!


Man, blogging makes me hungry.

If you click on the title you can read a review on Haruki East and you can also see their menu.
(Note: The prices have gone up. Sashimi deluxe is not longer $24, it's not $28).


Haruki East
172 Wayland Ave.
Providence, RI
401-223-0332

Thank you Don

Thank you Don for the info. I'm pretty bad with names especially when it comes to things I don't like. M-- told me that he thought it was "Pakarang" but for some reason I thought it was Parakang.

Anyway, today for lunch I had white rice with beans and chicken stew from Carolina's on Broad Street. I love love the chicken stew. The hot sauce that they have there makes it even better! They have one English speaker there and she's not always nice, but the food is good and CHEAP! so it's worth it. You can't beat a $3.50 meal. I don't even think McDonald's can beat that price these days.

Have you seen that soup Nazi episode? Yes, she’s sort of like that, but not that bad.

I don't have photos, but maybe I'll take my camera to work next week so I can take a photo of the place and the food. Yum.

It's good to know that "Don in Prov" and a few other folks are reading my blogs. I just hope that they're not too boring. =)

Carolina Restaurant
864 Broad Street
Providence, RI 02907
401-941-1333

They a lot a large assortment of meat/food, but I'm hooked on the chicken stew so I haven't been able to try anything else (it's been a year long addiction).