Put on one of my “ramen tees,” which still bears the faint evidence of previous splashes that no amount of washing will completely hide. Then, I headed over to the U for a morning of pokes, stabs, and staying motionless for 25 minutes. Afterward, a bowl of tonkotsu udon took me straight to a happy place where everything is all right.
Category: Eat
Lunch in the park
Cycled downriver to Minnehaha Park for lunch. Sea Salt Eatery has a cooked-to-order menu that is quite sophisticated for a park concession. We got the usual: fish tacos, delivered to our table, washed down with a local draft IPA.
School’s out for summer
One class marked the end of the school year with a potluck, including a generous supply of the ubiquitous and delicious Somali bur (beignets) and sambusas (samosas) on the right.
Lakeside lunch
On the way home from the dentist after a cleaning and an all-clear checkup, I rewarded myself with lunch at Bde Maka Ska (lake). The vegetable curry, fried plantains, and dirty rice nicely suited the steaming hot day. The Park Board recently built this new pavilion after a fire and contracted the catering to a local vendor who specializes in Jamaican cuisine.
A case of mistaken produce
“Finally, grape tomatoes at the Asian supermarket!” I thought. A closer inspection, however, revealed they were actually kumquats. Tomatoes aren’t really a staple in much of Asian cuisine. On the walk home, I couldn’t think of a single Japanese dish featuring them. Back home, I looked it up and confirmed that tomatoes only started to catch on in Japan in the 20th century.
Lunch at an Uptown fixture
Cycled a circular loop to Hopkins with a friend visiting from the UK, made possible by sections of the trail reopened after Green Line LRT construction. We stopped for lunch at Bryant Lake Bowl, a long-time Uptown fixture that’s part bowling alley, part theater, and part excellent restaurant. The bibimbap was superb comfort food, perfectly fitting a day that threatened rain but stayed dry for our bike ride.
Afternoon in Whitley Bay
This is one over-the-top fish and chip restaurant at the seaside in Whitley Bay’s Spanish City. I met my brother for a late lunch, followed by a bracing walk along the seafront to the Rendezvous Cafe, which is sometimes featured in the Vera TV series. There was no Vera sighting, but we did enjoy some cups of tea and cake.
Cake at the finish line for the day
It’s day 7 of 8 on our Rob Roy Way hike. We’ve settled into a comfortable routine: arriving at our destination by mid-afternoon, just in time for a pot of tea and some cake. Today we reached Aberfeldy after a day of stunning views and more waterfalls than we could count. A cuppa and a slice of cake were exactly what we needed before checking into our hotel for a pre-dinner nap.
Decolonizing the menu
Shared notes about our day over a dinner of indigenous ingredients at the bar at Owamni. While reservations for this James Beard Award-winning restaurant can be hard to snag, we’ve found that unreserved bar seats are usually available if we arrive early. Signs reminded us where we were, featuring tags like #landback, #86colonialism (86 is a nod to the restaurant lingo for removing an item from the menu), and the acknowledgment that we were dining on native land.
The snowbird’s lament
It’s the classic snowbird’s lament: a cluster of medical appointments for us both immediately after returning to winter. Walked over to the U for labs, then headed to nearby Kinzō for some tonkotsu udon. Lab results trickled in as I slurped my comfort food.