Sunda

Last night we went to a new restaurant - Sunda. We had a gift card which was a wedding gift (thanks Phil and Rebecca!), so that made the night extra fun. Sunda calls its type of cuisine "New Asian", and the menu was vast. It was hard to decide what to order with so many choices, but we ended up sticking with small dishes and sushi.

First course, by recommendation of our waiter: Roasted Duck Hash Salad (glazed duck, daikon cake, frisee, crispy egg) and Boo-Dah's Style Grilled Ahi Tuna and Pork (with chile vinegar, mango, sweet onions).




These ended up being our favorite dishes of the meal. The duck frisee salad was really excellent. You can't really see under the egg, but there was a lot of shredded duck meat and little glazed daikon cakes about the size of croutons. The pork and tuna salad was an interesting combination but worked really well. The pork was actually pork belly, and the dressing was spicy and a great complement to the mango.

Next we ordered the Rock Shrimp Tempura (with glazed walnuts and creamy honey aioli) as well as yellowtail and tuna sashimi.




The shrimp ended up being our least favorite of the night, but it was still very good. The creamy sweet aioli got to be a bit rich by the end of the dish, but the pairing of shrimp and walnuts was a good one. The sashimi was perfect. I'm usually partial to the tuna, but the yellowtail was actually my favorite. How pretty is that little tuna rose?

We ended the meal with two rolls - spicy tuna, and the Dynamite roll (I think...I can't find it on the menu online). The special roll had crab, scallop, shrimp, and probably 4 other ingredients I'm forgetting, in a "dynamite" sauce. They dimmed the lights in the restaurant before this last course and my photos of the rolls are really just not good enough to post. I am usually a sucker for specialty rolls with all kinds of creative ingredients, but I actually liked the plain old spicy tuna roll the best. It was truly spicy - which sounds stupid, but most places serve spicy tuna rolls that really aren't so spicy. This one had a hotness that took a few seconds to kick in, and it was great.

All in all it was a great meal and I hope we can go back soon.

On a totally unrelated note, we went for a few drinks yesterday afternoon at the Clark Street Ale House. They have a back patio that recently opened for the season, and since it was so beautiful yesterday we went to have a couple beers outside. This bar is extremely dog friendly, and it turned into a dog party on the patio.




Those are a couple of the sweet guys we were hanging out with at the bar. There was a dog-related mishap (not involving us) while we were there, and I'll just say if you're ever at this bar don't leave your jacket over the back of your chair, or leave your bag on the ground.