strawberry Archives - Curiously Carmen

I have heard amazing things about Kishimoto, both from my friends and also online. I’ve always wanted to try it, but know that it’s a sushi hotspot and I do not really want to wait ages in line.. 🙁

Finally, one day, timing worked out and my boyfriend took me there to try it! I was very eager, and had extremely high expectations before even walking in the front door.
As always, finding parking along Commercial Drive was a hassle but we did find free street parking that day! Yay! Kishimoto is a relatively small restaurant, and adding to the popularity= long, expected wait times. We went around 5:30pm right after I got off work, because I knew if we went around 6-7pm we would have to wait.

Walking in, you will see signs everywhere instructing guests to wait until they’re seated, no sitting down until all the guests have arrived, etc etc. Just shows how busy it gets! We waited around 5 minutes for the server to clear the table for us. Smooth sailing so far!
My boyfriend has been here before, and said that their tuna tataki ($11.95) is a must order. So, of course, being the curious food blogger I am, I had to give it a try. When the server put down the plate, I thought that she had mistaken our order cause all I saw were onions. The tuna tataki was actually under all the onions and roasted garlic. I was in love at first bite.

The tuna was incredibly soft, and melted in your mouth. It had a slightly grilled taste to it. Adding the onions, roasted dry garlic, and ponzu sauce, it was absolute perfection. My favourite dish of the night.
I knew that Kishimoto specialized in intricate plating techniques, so I was quite eager to see how our dishes would be plated! Here is the negitoro roll, chopped scallop roll ($4.95), and wild salmon nigiri ($3.00). I thought that the chopped scallop roll tasted pretty average. I really liked the negitoro roll since the tuna tasted very fresh, and had a lot of flavour.

The wild salmon nigiri also had a great, fresh, and juicy flavour to it as well. I ordered one piece of salmon nigiri, turns out that one order is actually equal to three pieces! I really enjoyed the sushi rice, it was cooked perfectly and had that distinct delicious sushi rice taste to it. Definitely worth the $3 since you get three pieces of nigiri! The “flower” art at the bottom was composed of daikon (type of carrot) sheets, edamame beans, and ginger. The candle seen at the top picture was a real candle, wrapped around a daikon sheet. Pretty interesting concept! I wonder if anyone has accidentally lit their daikon on fire…. Knowing how clumsy I am, I’m surprised I didn’t knock it over…
Up next, was our salmon oshisushi ($12.95). Oshisushi is a type of sushi made by placing all the ingredients into a box and pressing it together, hence the rectangular shape. The salmon oshisushi came with creamy sauce, crushed black peper, jalapenos, and salmon sashimi. After it is pressed, it then gets lightly torched. I enjoyed the salmon oshisushi as well, but found that after a few pieces, it was a bit too heavy for me due to the creamy sauce. I ended up requesting for a lemon slice, where I then lightly squeezed the juice onto the remaining pieces. I found that cut a bit of the cream heaviness out. Oshisushi = oishi 😉 If you know some Japanese haha…
The second oshisushi we ordered was the ebi ($12.95). This one came with cooked prawn, basil, pesto, creamy sauce, and crushed black pepper. Just like the salmon oshisushi, I found that it was a bit heavy to eat though I did enjoy the pesto sauce. There was a slightly grilled taste to these as well. I ended up drizzling a bit of lemon juice to this one as well. For those who have tried Kishimoto’s oshisushi, did you find that it was a bit on the heavy side due to the cream?

I noticed that all their desserts were made in-restaurant, so I wanted to give it a try. We ordered the house-made strawberry sorbet, which came with condensed milk topping and served with a cute wooden spoon! Our waitress informed us that it was still frozen, and to wait a few minutes before digging in. There was a very strong strawberry flavour to the sorbet! Adding the condensed milk on top, the dessert was sooo gooood. There were also bits of strawberry seeds in the dessert as well!

All in all, I did enjoy my visit to Kishimoto and left satisfied. Service was a bit slow at some points, since they had a full house. I noticed that it got busy around 6pm so I’m glad we had an early dinner. I highly recommend trying the tuna tataki here! What were your favourites?

-Carmen

PS. Stay tuned for some delicious Seattle eats next week! 😉

Hi everyone!

The last time I’ve been to Red Wagon was almost three years ago, back when it was starting to gain traction and recognition. I remember my visit that time was average at best. I didn’t understand why people raved about this place so much! =P

So, after constantly driving by this place and seeing it lined up out the door and around the corner, I decided to try this place again last month with my two other friends for lunch!
We came on a weekday, a bit past 1pm so it wasn’t that busy. When we arrived, there was only the big 6 person round table so they told us to just sit there. Later on, a party of 6 actually came in and they had to wait for our table so we felt kind of bad. But we couldn’t really switch because the only empty tables were small, and would definitely not fit the three of us.

The three of us were also pretty hungry, and ended up ordering quite a lot of food that we all split!
We ordered the trucker ($12.50), which came with 2 eggs, 2 buttermilk pancakes, toast, home fries and a choice of bacon or sausage. The home fries were their style of hash browns, they were seasoned well and came with green onions which gave it a better flavour.

The toast and sausages were pretty standard, and you can ask them for a side of homemade jam. As for the pancakes, let’s get into them here:
Of course, you can’t go to Red Wagon without trying their famous pulled pork pancakes with Jack Daniels syrup ($13.50). The pancakes were cooked perfectly, in all their buttery, indulgent, and guilty goodness. Since it was made with buttermilk, they were really rich.

They were also very fluffy and had a nice texture. We ended up using all the JD syrup and dipped the remaining 1/4 of the pancakes with the regular syrup. As for the pulled pork, it was very juicy and tender with a slight barbeque taste to them.
We should have stopped here with the chorizo meatball sandwich with a side of fries ($13), but we didn’t. Out of all four dishes we ordered, this was my least favourite, but it wasn’t bad, either. I felt that the bread was very dry and hard to chew. The chorizo meatball was a bit dry as well.
Phew! After sharing those three dishes, we were all stuffed. However, their cute dessert chalkboard was advertising pie and ice cream, and we all wanted to try it. We actually ordered two of these, because we thought our other friend was going to join us but we ran out of time, so my friend ate one herself.

They had either apple or strawberry rhubarb (I believe it was $5, plus an extra $1 for ice cream). I would have preferred more strawberries over rhubard, the rhubarb made it taste a bit more tart. The vanilla ice cream made it taste a bit sweeter and went really well with the pie!

Our bill including tips came to $60. It was a pretty satisfying meal, but I’m not sure if I would want to wait in line during high peak hours for their food. My favourite was their pancakes due to their fluffiness. Service was also very friendly and attentive!

-Carmen