Turning Japanese

Sushi Raku is a new restaurant and sushi bar that opened across the street from where we live. Walking home from the gym, we've passed by Raku for months now and wondered what all what the hell all the red ropes hanging inside were about.  We recently stopped by during their 'soft' opening for some good eats and then found our way to Tomo for desert.

The concept behind Raku is an interesting one: Japanese inspired cuisine, tapas-style. You can order up small bites here and there for a light sampling and then delve into the sushi menu. The sushi wasn't the best we've ever had, but the deep fried soft shell crab were delightful and as for the bacon wrapped scallops...well, you can never go wrong with bacon.

Their lunch menu offerings are pretty great and very affordable: juicy Kobe beef sliders and tender beef teriyaki. It's hard to mess up deep-fried anything, but the substantial helping of tempura vegetables that come with most lunch special meals is outstanding. The batter is light with a delicate crisp.

Deep fried mini soft shell crabs.

Skewered scallops wrapped in bacon and grilled.

Fried vanilla ice cream and chewy ice cream from Tomo. To this day we still marvel at what exactly makes that ice cream so damn chewy. We'll save that for another entry.