Belated Birthday Date :: Uchi, Houston

Hello everyone!

My birthday was a couple of weeks ago, which I spent among best of friends feeling incredibly blessed, but seeing as I was away at a music festival, I didn't get to celebrate it with my guy, who was stuck working in Houston.  So, on Wednesday, we went on a belated birthday date to Uchi!  =)

Amulet had highly recommended this restaurant, and since she never leads us wrong, we thought it would be the perfect time to try it out!

I have dubbed this dress my 'date dress' and I couldn't be happier with it.  You can find it here  and you're going to flip when you find out how much it is.  go on, take a look, and grab it while you can!

my handsome date for the night  =)

If you plan on going, I highly recommend going for their happy hour, 5-6:30, and also making a reservation.  When we tried to make our reservation, the place was booked for days in advance!

Once we sat down, we were greeted by the friendliest waiter staff, who began by bringing us piping hot towels to wash our hands.  I had never been to anywhere that did this, so I was a bit surprised when they brought us a bowl of towels, but it's actually really nice!  all restaurants should do this haha

Then, we started looking through the menu, which turned out to be totally unnecessary because our waiter offered to just bring us whatever he thought we would enjoy!

the menu wasn't all that helpful anyway because I had no idea what most of the things were on there.. haha

So began the marathon of little dishes that our waiter picked out for us.

The first one was this little beauty, Machi Cure, which was apparently on Top Chef (or Iron Chef..)! 

deliciously fresh blend of baby yellowtail, yucca crisp, asian pear, almonds, and garlic..

Next came the Uchiviche.  salmon, striped bass, tomato, bell pepper, garlic, cilantro...

haha he looks very suspicious of it, but we assure you, it was quite delicious  ;)

Each dish was about 2-3 bites each, so in between tastings, we chatted, enjoyed the industrial/chic vibe of the place, watched the chefs, and just enjoyed each other's company.

and I decided that I want a water jug like this one  haha

the next couple came in such quick succession that I honestly can't recall what the waiter said they were, but they were all amazing!

this one, we thought was scallops, but wasn't... sea bass?  can't remember  haha but it was gone oh-so-fast!

incredibly fresh sashimi...  can't remember what the fish was  haha  but it came on top of oranges, and we really enjoyed the blend  =)

the next dish was perhaps the...  most interesting dish of the night.  It was actually mistakenly brought to our table by a different waiter (we had one main waiter, but we had 3 or 4 other waiters bringing us food and taking away the empty dishes in a blink of an eye all through the evening), and it was...  rabbit.  yup. hoppity hop.  

It was my first time trying rabbit..

It was ok, but it was a bit too rich for me after a couple of bites.  A bit like duck but I think richer than duck.

Incredibly fresh oysters?  yes please! amazing.

eggplant!

and we finished the dinner off with some pork!

If it's your first time at Uchi, I would highly recommend doing what we did and have the waiter bring out his favorite dishes.  It was nice to be surprised with different dishes continually throughout the evening, and this way we didn't have to be completely lost in the menu for the better part of the meal.  More time to chat and gaze into each other's eyes...  haha who are we kidding, like we would be the romantic type.. for us, it' was more like goofing off and being snap-happy like the little kids that we are.  =)

After dinner, we decided to check out the Menil Collection! 

I had never been, so it was nice to finally check it out before I leave Houston!  No photos were allowed inside, but we enjoyed the little exhibit thoroughly, and would definitely recommend checking it out.  It's free!  ;)

with a little bit of amazing gelato in our tummies (from Sweet Cup), we tried to find other classy things to do around the area (all three places mentioned here are all within a couple of blocks from one another), but by then most things were closed, and it was too early to head home... sooo....

We went and watched the Guardians of the Galaxy!   hahaha   yeah,,, little kids.  that's us.  But we really enjoyed the movie!  It's really quite funny, and a fresh take on yet another super hero movie. Oh, and Zoe Saldana?  she's now in my mind, the alien lady.  She was in Avatar, the Star Trek movies, and now this one?  and I haven't seen her in any other movies (though I'm aware that she did them) so yup.  the super attractive alien lady.  

Anyway, we would really recommend the movie. my favorite character is the tree man.  You'll see why when you get to the end of the movie  ;)

Thanks for stopping by, and let me know if you visit any of these places, and how you liked it!

Have a wonderful weekend!

--Janny

Korean Birthday Soup and Ironman 3

Happy Friday!!!

When you're not in school, it becomes rather difficult to keep track of the days of the week, don't you think?  haha.  Today, for example, feels like Saturday because last night we went on David's birthday 'date' and I guess I just got really used to doing something like that Friday-Sunday during the school year  =)

So the plan was that I would have the 미역국, aka the Seaweed Soup, aka the Birthday Soup, adventure earlier in the day, and have that and 떡볶이, a rice cake dish ready for dinner by 5:30.   Well, due to certain things happening, like me locking myself out of the apartment--while the stove was on, while Amulet was 4 hours away, while my landlord was out of the country--things got delayed and David ended up helping me wrap up the rice cake dish for dinner  =)

I don't know what's going on with the swoops there with my hair  haha

The soup was definitely an adventure, and as expected, Mom got many "Mommy, how do I...?" phone calls throughout the process.  BUT!!  in the end, it turned out pretty well!

I mean, it didn't taste exactly like Mom's but it was actually pretty good!  And I know it doesn't look all that pretty, but it tastes good, and it's all sorts of good for you  ;)

Our dinner of birthday soup and the rice cake dish.  I was worried what the birthday boy would think of the seaweed soup, since,,, well, it's not the most common thing in the U.S., but he ate it up like a seasoned Korean!  haha
 

After dinner, we opened some presents, and I had a lot of fun laughing at David struggling with the packaging  =p

I had been hearing a lot about Stickygram, and I was quite intrigued by the idea, so I got him some that chronicled our year together  =)  I thought they did a really great job, they were really quite cute, and most importantly, he loved them!  Such a great way to have pictures displayed in your house (kitchen)!  I miss the days when we used to print pictures all of the time.  At home, we have albums after albums of my childhood, but since we got the digital camera, we never print photos anymore... so sad...  So I think this is a great way to 'print' pictures (in a more displayable way too!) in today's digital camera world!

Another thing he opened was the board game, the Amazing Labyrinth!   I learned about this game when I was visiting friends in Nebraska, (post here) and it was so much fun!!  The board we used was kind of falling apart because it was so old, but everyone thought that they had discontinued the game, so it couldn't be replaced.  I had wanted to get him some board game to continue the tradition of having game nights, so I was ecstatic when I saw this in the game store in the Rice Village!  

We tried it out before we headed to Ironman 3!

We snapped this picture in the middle of the game sometime, and it was a good thing too, because then we realized that we were running late for Ironman 3, and all thoughts of picture taking went out the window as we hurried to the theater.

We actually both really enjoyed Ironman 3!!  Of course, there were a lot of things getting blown up, people getting pummeled, and people surviving things they shouldn't survive, etc.  But what I really appreciated about the film was that they incorporated a lot of humor into the movie.  It would be really intense, really intense, really intense, then all of the sudden, bam, and we would be cracking up at something or other.  And I thought that Robert Downey Jr. did a really great of bringing in that humorous, charming side to the movie.  If you're in the mood for an action summer blockbuster, we would highly recommend this one!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!
Thanks for stopping by!
--Janny