Blurry Bento Box

We're back from the Easter weekend escapade and have absolutely no groceries. Instead of trying to conjure up something out of sardines and dill pickles, we went out to Earl's for dinner. Apparently Earl's was featured on the Food Network with chef Michael Smith's show Chef at Large and they also have a former Iron chef challenger helping to design their new menu, so good for them. Too bad it's still high school students preparing the dishes for the most part. We settled on ordering 2 appetizer platters so we could have a large variety, rather than 2 entrees, which would've been about the same price.

The group grab is a selection of 3 typical pub fare type dishes. We chose the hot wings with parm dip, calamari with tzatziki and chili chicken. On Wednesday nights Earl's has a pound of wings for only and we used to visit quite often. That is, until we decided that eating several pounds of deep fried chicken once a week probably wasn't the best thing to be doing as a dinner alternative. The parm dip (basically ranch with parmesan) was especially good this time around as they seem to have taken a page from the recipe book at Moxie's and added basil to it. I like that they use the tentacle part of the calamari and not just the rings, but this batch was a bit greasier than usual and the batter was falling off. The chili chicken is sort of like sweet and sour/pineapple chicken balls, but lighter and crisper.

Our other appetizer platter was the bento box, which came with steamed edamame, sweet soy salmon, dynamite shrimp rolls and togarashi shrimp. The edamame were really nicely salted and buttery once I stopped eating the pods. The sweet soy salmon was a decent sized fillet for such a platter and had a nice cinnamon and chili sauce. The dynamite shrimp rolls were not too far off from California Rolls, but had a sweeter ginger dipping sauce. The togarashi shrimp was good, but there were no particular spices that stood out. Perhaps that's just because of the beer and hot wings I engulfed previous to eating it.

I didn't bother harassing our waitress for ingredients for any of these because most of them are pretty self-explanatory and it would've really held up the kitchen. It's good to be back in my own home, with my own kitchen, and not having to rely on other people to feed me. It was definitely nice to get away for the weekend, though. Thanks for all the food, ma!

I know I originally had a rule where I would ask for the recipes when eating out, but it's far too much hassle for everyone involved, especially if I am out of town. Doing 4 entries at once, even without the recipes, nearly killed me.