Restaurant-in-Review: Oyama Japanese Sushi & Grill

As my little city slowly is getting better at this restaurant stuff and adding unique and fun places to eat (and let's be honest, I love to eat), I wanted to document my experiences dining at them.  After going back and forth several times, I decided it was best to keep all my ramblings in one spot rather than make two separate blogs.  So here it goes, my first random review of one of my fav's - Oyama!

Now to be fair, I'm a bit biased about Oyama.  I love me some sushi and Oyama is hands-down, the best in Cedar Rapids.  But to be fair, I made myself order something I've never had at Oyama for my meal in an attempt to give a more objective review.

Let's start at the beginning though.  Oyama is located in this little strip mall by a movie theater.  See, here it is.  Stupid iPhone camera made their sign all white.

And two businesses down is a CrossFit, where the crazy people work out.  SORRY if you're reading this and do CrossFit.  I actually think you're badass, for the record.  Here's the CrossFit - if you look closely you can actually see people working out while I go to eat.  Haha, suckers!

So to start off I HAD to order what may be my all-time favorite appetizer of any restaurant.  Black pepper tuna tataki.  What is tataki you ask?

Wikipedia Definition: Tataki - A manner of preparing fish or mean in Japanese cuisine.  The meat or fish is seared very briefly over a hot flame or pan, briefly marinated in vinegar, sliced thinly and seasoned with ginger. 

Heather Definition: Tataki - AMAZINGNESS.

Not only can I eat this whole plate by myself - although I was nice enough to share - but I could eat it every day without question.  

My dinner partner in crime ordered a seaweed salad and for the sake of research and and science, let me try some.  

Verdict? Well, a little slimey/rubbery.  Not terrible.  Taste is a little bland, but I think that's the intention. With my need and love for flavor, I don't think that I would personally order it ever, but it wasn't the worst thing I've ever had.  I'd give it a 6 out of 10.

Next up, my pre-dinner salad that comes.  Standard in a lot of restaurants with the typical ginger dressing.  Kinda boring.  Blah blah blah...

And for the main course - sashimi!  

It was "Chef's Choice" which is just code for "we're going to give you what we want and you're going to like it."  From what I could tell, we determined that we had fatty tuna, salmon, white tuna, crab, maaaayyybbeee a mackerel, and then a 'we have no freaking clue'.  

For me, it was cut a little thicker than I would have preferred.  Everything was fresh though, which is REALLY important.  Obviously.  I mixed some wasabi in my soy sauce for some extra kick and spiciness.  Came with a side of rice to help take the fishy edge off.  Not the best sashimi I've ever had, but I'd order it again. My dinner date got the same thing and made it through about half of his plate before deciding it was just too much fish at once.  He threw in the towel and got some hot Saki.  Smart man.

Saki!

Other amazing Oyama meals I've had? Combination yaki soba noodles (chicken, shrimp and my fav, steak), chicken fried rice WITH yum yum sauce (Holy shit if you've never had yum yum sauce or don't know what it is do yourself a favor, go out RIGHT NOW and get some from your nearest Japanese restaurant and never speak a word of your shortcomings to anyone).  And then of course the sushi, as mentioned earlier.  

And for those of you that live in my city and try telling me that "I should go to Sushi House" SHUT. UP.  I've been to Sushi House. I got food poisoning from their sushi.  If it's your place, then do your thing and go there, but hell no will I go back for sushi.

Final thoughts? Oyama is great. Go there. Love it. 

Apple Pie! Not the shot, popular to contrary belief. With cinnamon roll crust, graham cracker topping, icing and omnomnomnom

It all started so innocently at work one day. In typical fashion I was thinking about cooking and food blogging and everything I love instead of doing my typical product manager duties and my co-workers were like "you should make an apple pie with cinnamon roll crust."  My first thought was "holy shit what a great idea!"  Then I thought "well now wait, cinnamon rolls rise.  Son of a bitch that won't work..." But not to be deterred I did a little research (that consisted of combing through FIVE pages of Google searches) and found a recipe to try.

Now my adventures in baking are few and far between.  I'm not the biggest sweets person but that's not to say I don't enjoy sweets, I'd just rather have salt. But we've been over this before, for those of you who read this thing.  So after a few weeks of promising my co-workers I would make this pie (they, along with a few other friends are my guinea pigs when it comes to me cooking and baking), I figured I'd go with the follow through.  So off to the store I went to get the shit to make my first pie.

So first thing's first, get yourself a package of cinnamon rolls.  And slice em' down.  Remember, these things rise.  So slice them and mash em' down into a crust.

Next is the pain the ass part.  Peeling and slicing apples.  Slicing - not so bad because I have one of those apple slicer/corer thingy's but peeling that shit is a pain in the ass.  Seriously.  I'm sure there is some apple peeler contraption I can buy, I just never in my life thought I'd be making an apple pie.  So I had to do that shit by hand.  Oh well, I got over it.  So you slice the apples and mix them with apple butter (or applesauce), cinnamon, salt, lemon, and butter, and then put in the crust.

Ohhh see my pretty new pie dish?!  Thank you Target :-)

Anywho, next is the graham cracker topping.  Crush up some graham crackers, throw in some melted butter and brown sugar and put on top.  I crushed up a few extra graham crackers and put them on top.  

And bake! My recipe called for 45 minutes but I set the timer for 30 to check to make sure neither the graham crackers or the cinnamon rolls were burning.  SUPER glad I did as the cinnamon rolls were at a good crisp state, so, I covered it with aluminum foil and cooked for another 10 minutes.  And voila! 

I figured I couldn't just let the best part of cinnamon rolls go to waste, the icing, so I put it in a little ziploc bag and cut the corner off and drizzled the sugary amazingness on top.  

Recipe time!

INGREDIENTS:
* Graham crackers (one package)

* 6 Tbsp. butter (Divided)

* 2/3 c. brown sugar

* 3 1/2 c. apple, peeled and diced

* 1 tbsp. flour

* 1 tsp. ground cinnamon

* 1 c. apple butter OR applesauce

* 1 tbsp. lemon juice

* 1 roll of cinnamon rolls

DIRECTIONS:

* Heat oven to 350 degrees

Crust:

1) Open the cinnamon rolls and slice them down thin

2) Press into pie pan

Filling:

1) Peel and slice apples

2) Combine apples, flour, cinnamon, salt, apple butter/applesauce, lemon and 2 tbsp. butter (I cut the butter down into small chunks so it would mix well) in a bowl

3) Spoon mixture into crust

Topping:

1) In a Ziploc bag crumble graham crackers

2) Add brown sugar and mix well

3) Melt 4 tbsp. butter and SLOWLY (you don't want to melt your Ziploc bag) put into mixture

4) Put mixture on top of the pie filling

Grilled Cheese & Cheeseburger Mash-Up!

Soooo I love grilled cheese.  And cheeseburgers.  I guess I love a lot things when it comes to food, but why not?!  Food is meant to be enjoyed!  So when I was craving a cheeseburger AND a grilled cheese sandwich, I figured why the hell not combine them.  So off to the store I went to gather my cast of characters...

For my grilled cheese part I choose 3 cheeses, although I only ended up using two of them.  American, Gruyere (I'M OBSESSED!) and fresh  mozzarella.  For the burger I found some lower carb bread, onion, tomato and dill pickle.  

When I cooked the burgers I mixed the ground beef up with egg and worchestershire.  And garlic.  Always garlic.  Yeah I realize my burgers aren't the prettiest shape, but seriously you're going to press them into a mess of gooey cheese so as long as you make them thin, who the hell cares?!

Next I cooked bacon, because duh, of course I was going to put bacon in this amazingness.  And for the record, yes, that's turkey bacon.  Which I happen to love as much as regular fatty awesome bacon.  Don't judge turkey bacon until you've tried it!

Next you get to the grilled cheese part.  Pretty simple.  Butter one side of the bread and put it in a grill pan or panini press.  And start layering.

And butter your top bread and put it on top.  

Word to the wise.  Don't make your sammich too big otherwise it will be hard for the cheese to melt and to flip.

And eat! Omnomnomnom!  Damn it, now I want another one!

Homemade Pot Stickers! Okay, fine...Drunk Homemade Potstickers!

So I've become a 'yes' girl as of late with this whole theory that you should say 'yes' to trying things in life, especially new things, because you really don't know if you don't, or won't, like them until you try them. And the beauty of it is that if you don't like it, you don't have to do it again, right?! So going with my new 'yes' theme, I made last Saturday a day of trying new things.  Those two things included rugby and pot stickers  Watching rugby, that is (god knows I'm not cut from the badass cloth that those chicks were that play that game), and making pot stickers.  "Making" as in letting someone else do the hard part, and me putting them together.  At this point your takeaway should be "she didn't actually cook anything, so she's going to ramble on about this for a short bit and post pictures she took while drunk, making pot stickers."

Anywho, it was a long, cold day.  I mean, I sat outside in 40 degree weather watching these girls play some rugby and drinking beer, like any classy lady at her first rugby game would.  I wore the finest clothes I could find for the occasion - winter hat, aviator sunglasses, fingerless gloves, knee high boots and a jean jacket. We stopped at a biker bar afterwards for drinks and shots, so naturally, the next logical move was to make homemade pot stickers. I had no idea where I was going or who I was going to meet, but next thing I know I'm being greeted by the sweetest, most warming lady - mom.  No seriously, I don't even know if I got her real name. I'm pretty sure I even asked, and I received instructions to call her 'mom'.  Which fit her impeccably as she just had that really charming, warm, loving and welcoming 'mom' quality that only the super awesome mom's have.

So blah, blah, blah, fast forward to 1, 2 hours later (I really don't know, I was drunk, it could have been 3 or 4 hours), and next thing I know I was sitting down to assemble these homemade pot stickers that 'mom' had put together.

Ta-da! Doesn't the table look so nice and clean and orderly?

That lasted all of 5 minutes.  But more importantly, she had these things that were actually made for making pot stickers!  Seriously! I was fascinated!  You put your dough-thingy (I prefer to use technical terms) in the pot sticker thingy, you put a little water on the dough, and put your mixture in.

And press! Bam! Just like that, you've made a pot sticker!  Then mom goes and boils them and cooks does, and you eat!  

See, thumbs up, everyone's happy!

Now, let's take a quick moment to give a shout out to arguably one of the best condiments around, Sriracha sauce.  I mean, you may be risking our friendship if you don't like this stuff because it's amazing.  Soooo amazing that in fact, I will be attempting to make Sriracha ice cream sandwiches soon so stay tuned!

Grilled Buffalo Chicken Skewers

So anyone that knows me knows that I have a slight Franks Red Hot Sauce obsession. And by slight, I mean I love the stuff so much I could probably eat it (drink it?) right out of the bottle...I swear I haven't tried it! Yet! Ever? Yeah...I would probably try, who am I kidding.  Anywho, so I was craving buffalo something the other day and didn't have the energy to get some wings on the bone because that shit is seriously hard work sometimes for very little meat! So I figured I'd get all fancy and make my own on skewers (that's the fancy part). So making these was super easy and fast, which was the awesome part!

First things first and that's to warm up some sauce. You're going to put in a shit ton of Franks (or the sauce of your liking, I suppose). Then a little sugar, a little white vinegar, a little cayenne pepper and some butter.  Mix it all together and let it get warm. 

In the meantime, cube some chicken (or buy it already cubed to save time) and cook it in a pan. I always season even if it's as simple as some fresh ground black pepper and sea salt.

Watch the sauce so it doesn't burn and when it's nice and warm, put it in a bowl. When your chicken is done cooking, toss it in the sauce until coated. See - SOOOO easy!

Thread your chicken on skewers and you're done! 

Now I also made some dip because I'm obsessed with ranch as well and have a new found love for blue cheese, so I mixed sour cream, a packet of dry ranch dressing and some blue cheese crumbles together. It's really just that easy!

To be honest I just sort of threw ingredients together for this, but the sauce was pretty easy:

HOT SAUCE:

* 1-2c. Franks Hot Sauce

* 1 tbsp. Cayenne Pepper

* 1 tsp. White Vinegar

* 1 tbsp. Sugar

* 4 tbsp. Butter