Last Night's Dinner

Last night I had dinner at Japonica (University and 12th, NYC) with my friend Lauren. Usually when we go there, I get the sashimi platter with a fried oyster roll (kaki fry!), but last night I decided to go for the Japonica Box (bold denotes what I selected when a choice was to be made):

1) Miso soup or Edemame
2) Spicy Tuna Crunch roll (spicy tuna and tempura flake), Hot Alaskan roll (spicy chopped salmon, avocado and cucumber), Hama-Peno roll (chopped fresh yellowtail and sliced fresh jalapeno)
3) Shrimp and Vegetable Tempura
4) Eel-Don or Alaskan-Don
5) Chicken Yakitori or Beef Negimaki
6) Ice cream or sorbet (I chose neither as my mantra is 'meats not sweets'.

My only reservation about the Japonica Box was that it did not contain any sashimi. I'm not a HUGE maki person, so I would have passed on all of the aforementioned rolls to get my hands on some sashimi. So I ended up ordering some hamachi (yellowtail) and hirame (flukey fluke) a la carte. But then when my big box came it didn't even have any of those novelty rolls! Instead it included 4 pieces of maguro (tuna), 2 pieces of sake (salmon) and 2 pieces of hamachi! Listen, I was pleasantly surprised, but WTF? Had I known about the sashimi substitution, I certainly would not have ordered pricey sashimi a la carte! I ended up spending a lot of money, but it was yummy. I do find Japonica to be overrated and over-priced, but it's a Village staple and I keep going back.

Afterward my friend and I went to go get Chinatown style massages in the West Village. No happy endings, or 'frips' as it were. You can read about the massage later on my other blog, China-Latina, but I'm new to this whole blog thing so don't know how to link you.