{"id":518,"date":"2007-12-21T15:28:10","date_gmt":"2007-12-22T01:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.studionewmedia.com\/blog\/2007\/12\/21\/our-dog-is-an-awesome-dog\/"},"modified":"2007-12-21T15:28:10","modified_gmt":"2007-12-22T01:28:10","slug":"our-dog-is-an-awesome-dog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/2007\/12\/21\/our-dog-is-an-awesome-dog\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Dog is an Awesome Dog"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are a surprising number of Japanese-themed<\/em> restaurants in Kaneohe.\u00c2\u00a0 I say “themed” because in general, they serve Americanized or “Local”-ized fare and not authentic, traditional Japanese cuisine.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’m also being a racist, since so far all of the ones that I have tried in Kaneohe have been run by ethnic Koreans.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not to say Koreans can’t make good food – they make terriffic food: I’m saying the restaurants in question don’t produce acceptable approximations of\u00c2\u00a0Nihon-ryouri.<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0 It’s\u00c2\u00a0picture-book cooking – it looks<\/em> like it’s supposed to, but doesn’t taste<\/em> exactly like it’s supposed to.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like those science fiction shows where aliens build soul-less, substance-less\u00c2\u00a0copies of earth cities, then populate them with kidnapped earthlings and assume the humans\u00c2\u00a0will not notice they\u00c2\u00a0aren’t at home anymore.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

On Monday night, we went to Domo<\/em> in the small strip-mall that also houses the Kaneohe Boston’s North End Pizza<\/em>, between Windward Mall and Zippy’s<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0 The space was cold and industrial, with white walls and a high ceiling.\u00c2\u00a0 It was about half-full, which was a good sign.\u00c2\u00a0 I ordered a spicy ahi roll and a zaru-soba.\u00c2\u00a0 The server was quick and\u00c2\u00a0polite, and commendably repeated our order to us to make sure everything was correct.<\/p>\n

\"12-17-07_2006.jpg\"<\/a>The spicy ahi roll was the normal size and cut neatly into 6 pieces.\u00c2\u00a0 The cuke and avocado outmassed the ahi by a fair margin, but for $5 USD, that was not unexpected.\u00c2\u00a0 Flavor-wise, it was in fact\u00c2\u00a0spicy<\/em>, but also fairly heavy on the sesame oil.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0It was not the\u00c2\u00a0tobiko<\/em>-mayo based spicy ahi that\u00c2\u00a0I have experienced elsewhere.\u00c2\u00a0 The rice on the ends wasn’t “packed” well enough, so two pieces promptly fell apart when touched by the chopsticks.\u00c2\u00a0 When I managed to get the sushi into my mouth I discovered that the rice was both hot and unseasoned.<\/p>\n

\"12-17-07_2012.jpg\"<\/a>The\u00c2\u00a0zaru-soba was “green tea flavored” third-party stuff and was wet and overcooked.\u00c2\u00a0 The soba-tsuyu<\/em> (sauce) was dark like shoyu and overly strong.\u00c2\u00a0 Did they not follow the dilution directions on the bottle?\u00c2\u00a0 The\u00c2\u00a0shiso-aji daikon<\/em> (perilla-flavored Japanese radish) and hakusai<\/em> (Napa cabbage) tsukemono<\/em> (pickles) that came as a side were really salty.\u00c2\u00a0 Not quite worth the price of admission at $7 USD.<\/p>\n

Throughout dinner, I was oblivious to the surroundings until some familiar sounds were identified in my subconscious.\u00c2\u00a0 I had heard the music somewhere… where was it?\u00c2\u00a0 Some TV advertisement…\u00c2\u00a0 Our what<\/em> is an awesome what<\/em>?\u00c2\u00a0 It was that Christian pop CD they sell on TV playing!\u00c2\u00a0 The alien-abduction Japanese food<\/em> was one thing, but\u00c2\u00a0being subjected to the brainwashing of\u00c2\u00a0an oppressive Western religion in the guise of background music was another.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

The food was food.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0I don’t think it was worth the $12 USD + tax\/tip that I paid.\u00c2\u00a0 My mother later asked me if I thought it was better than Gyotaku<\/em> to which I said, “no, not even close.”\u00c2\u00a0 It was definitely\u00c2\u00a0better than the one over near Panda Cuisine<\/em> near Safeway (can’t remember the name), making it the best Japanese-themed restaurant in Kaneohe that I’ve tried so far.\u00c2\u00a0 The family that owns\/operates Domo<\/em> is very nice – I really do wish their food was better.<\/p>\n

Two out of four grinning monkeys for the food<\/p>\n

Four out of four raised fists of anger for the Christian pop<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are a surprising number of Japanese-themed restaurants in Kaneohe.\u00c2\u00a0 I say “themed” because in general, they serve Americanized or “Local”-ized fare and not authentic, traditional Japanese cuisine.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’m also being a racist, since so far all of the ones that I have tried in Kaneohe have been run by ethnic Koreans.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[8,12,13],"tags":[31],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paJYlx-8m","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studionewmedia.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}