Birthday Eats

Johnny took me out to dinner at Big Tuna, a local Japanese restaurant. I'd eaten there once before, but this second time really won my heart!

First thing to hit the table was the edamame.


We started with the usual ginger salad and miso soup. I need to find a recipe for the ginger dressing they always serve at Japanese restaurants. It is so frickin' good. Johnny and I were sitting there trying to think of words to describe it, but eventually gave up and just stuffed our faces.

Johnny's appetizer was their vegetable gyoza. I had one and it was good, but I didn't want to waste any of my precious stomach space on them!

My appetizer was a Godzilla roll. I was going to snap a picture of the description, but I forgot and by the time I remembered she'd already taken the menu! From what I can remember it was spicy tuna, eel, avacado, and cream cheese. Then it was tempura fried and had an eel sauce and this spicy pepper jelly on it. It was one of those "I'm feeling adventurous" kind of orders, so I wasn't sure how much I'd like it - but I loved it! The texture was spot-on and all of the flavors complimented each other so well. Plus the cream cheese created this really nice gooey creamy aspect to it.

Johnny's entree was teriyaki steak. He offered me a bite, but I never took him up on his offer because I was too busy eating everything else!

My entree was the seafood tempura platter. There were two skewers of scallops, two shrimp, two hunks of white fish, and two crab legs, not to mention a boatload of tempura veggies.

Both entrees also came with rice and we were too full for dessert. But they did bring us some fresh honeydew melon cubes to end the meal while our check was being processed.

When we got home and digested a bit we were ready for my birthday request: cheesecake!!!! I'm not a huge fan of cake and I hate frosting. So Johnny made me cheesecake from my dad's recipe he always made for me when I was growing up.


Sorry for the photos in this post! I was in "birthday girl mode" instead of "food blogger mode." So they're darker and more hurried than usual!