The Average Cook

So after hearing a few complaints about my negative restaurant reviews and too many recipes from Cooking Light from some of my colleagues (you know who you are Mr. Old Spice) who subscribe to The Average Cook, I promised them a positive review (and some non-Cooking Light recipes to come…).

Sushi is one of my husband and mine favorite cuisines. I could seriously eat sushi everyday if one, it wasn’t so expensive and two, not recommended to eat raw fish that often. When we first moved to Monmouth County, NJ we tried several sushi places but none of them were great. None were bad, but none were phenomenal. I’m not sure what made us try Oishi Sushi but I do know it had a very good write-up in The Asbury Park Press. It’s a tiny little place, that’s never that crowded, located in a small strip mall off Route 36. The many times we’ve been there, I’ve noticed that the delivery guy is constantly in and out of there (they offer free delivery to a few towns in the area).

Every time we’ve dined here the service was impeccable. They are extremely polite and attentive. They also always take off 10% of the bill, a coupon you can easily find on the take-out menu located at the front desk or on Restaurant Passion’s website (where you can also order on-line, see the menu and restaurant pics).

I’ve never taken any pics while we’ve dined in because I didn’t want to get the weird “Why is that lady taking pictures of her food?” look. However, our most recent dining experience was take-out. I stopped by one night after working really late and having no ambition to cook dinner. When I arrived I placed our order and while I was waiting, the staff insisted I sit at one of the empty tables while they served me tea. How many places will do that?

We started with the Avocado Salad, avocados and flying fish roe on green salad. This was served with your standard ginger dressing. This was a perfect start. The salad was crisp and fresh and the avocados were ripe and buttery, no browning. The ginger dressing has just the right consistency and flavor of ginger.

I had the Sashimi Appetizer which I specifically requested tuna and salmon. It is super fresh and buttery and flavorful. I’ve had tuna and salmon sashimi at many different places and it’s easy for it to be bad. I’ve had soft, squishy, flavorless, fishy, and mushy sashimi. But at Oishi Sushi it tastes like they just reeled it in.

My husband had the eel roll and the shrimp tempura roll (my absolute favorite). He loved both and I can stand-by the shrimp tempura roll. It’s crispy and warm with big hunks of shrimp. And by request, they always put the spicy mayo on the side for us, because it’s a tad bit too spicy for me. I also had a salmon avocado roll. Again, nothing but freshness and flavor.

(Shrimp Tempura Roll on left, Salmon Avocado Roll top right, Eel Roll bottom right)

This place keeps us coming back so often it was starting to hurt the checkbook! But we do try to get here about once a month and always look forward to eating here whether it’s in the restaurant or take-out. I highly recommend this tiny little place if you are in the area.

Banzai!

This past Saturday night because I was over Thanksgiving leftovers I just wanted to go out for dinner. We have a list of restaurants we want to try in the area and because it was the closest, we decided on It’s Greek to Me in Holmdel, NJ. I believe this is a chain restaurant with two other locations in Northern NJ. I had eaten here once before with a work luncheon and thought it was pretty good so I wanted to give it another shot. The husband had never eaten here and he’s game for any food.

The decor is Mediterranean with a lot of blue. Very simple, clean, nice. We were immediately seated as there were quite a few open tables. It was about 8:30 p.m. by this time so the lack of diners didn’t bother me as much as it usually does. We had immediate service from the wait staff who remained consistently attentive throughout the night.

For starters we ordered the Grilled Feta with Fresh Tomato and Sweet Pepper for $8.50. This was served with warm pita bread. I love feta so there was nothing here to not like. I will point out that the tomatoes were the kind I loathe in restaurants. Very pale, pink, and flavorless. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. There is no excuse, especially in NJ for a restaurant to not be serving awesome tomatoes! I can still get beautiful, juicy red tomatoes at my grocery store and Costco.

For our main meal, the husband order the Lamb Gyro Combo served with tomatoes, onions, and tzatziki sauce for $10.50. It was a massive portion and he enjoyed it very much.

I ordered the Shrimp Souvlaki platter served with Greek fries, grilled sweet pepper, grilled tomatoes, tzatziki, onion & parsley for $17.95. Ever the picky one, I did not enjoy mine. The “Greek” fries were regular fries with some “special” seasonings. Whatever. Some of them weren’t even cooked all the way through. The shrimp souvlaki was about a dozen or so small to medium size shrimp that appeared to have been on a kebab with onions. The shrimp, while it did have some flavor, was mostly overcooked and had the delicious, rubbery taste I just so adore. I thought it was overpriced for what they offered.

Before I said something, worrying my husband would want to come back here again since he loved his gyro so much, he said as we got in the car, “Well, that’s one place I don’t have to go back to.” Thank goodness. Overall, I think it’s overrated as I’ve heard many people rave about this place. The food is decent at best. The service and atmosphere were good but again, FOOD brings me back.

I guess I should have just stuck with the Thanksgiving leftovers that night….