Monday, January 26, 2009

No Vampires Here!

Last night, David & I went to Arin Krin, the garlic restaurant.
It's been coined the garlic restaurant because, well, just about everything on the menu has garlic. Baked garlic, garlic chicken, garlic fried rice, etc.
I've heard people talk about it and now that we're down to our last days on the island, I was determined to eat there. I like eating. I like garlic. So how could I miss an opportunity to try it out?
At home, it's not unheard of to head over the state line to Chicago for dinner. Or to drive across the county just to get some yummy yummy food at El Taco Real. The whole island here is 78 miles long and less than 18 miles wide, and everything is fairly crowded together, so long distance driving has become sort of foreign to us. Plus when you put a couple hundred thousand people on an island this small, there's bound to be some traffic. When I told David where the garlic restaurant is (over halfway to the airport...*gasp*) he was reluctant to go. I wanted to make reservations for Saturday, but he didn't want to sit in traffic. We decided to go on Monday. It took us about 30 minutes to drive down there and there was very little traffic, so score one David point for Arin Krin.
Arin Krin is sort of an izakaya, or dim sum style. Usually people will go in a large group, order food to pass around the table, and order more as the night goes on. Not us. We went, just the two of us, and ordered SEVEN items right away. I explained that we could order, eat, and order more if we were still hungry, but David wanted to do it his way. And it didn't turn out so bad...I wrote down what we wanted on a piece of paper I had in my purse (when you're eating 7 out of 70-something menu items, it's hard to memorize your order!) and we emptied 5 out of the 7 dishes!
We had Tuna & Avocado with Garlic & Cheese Salad, Garlic Pasta, Beef & Broccoli with Garlic, Gyoza Roll, Deep Fried Garlic, Garlic Pasta, Garlic Pizza, and Fried Pork & Kimchi.
The Garlic Pasta was the first thing brought to the table and it made a delicious first impression! The pasta was just tossed in an oily garlicky buttery sauce and there was tons of sliced fresh garlic in there. A couple cloves at least.
I believe the Beef & Broccoli with Garlic was the favorite for both of us. Oh my goodness it was so good! Again, chunks of garlic.
The Fried Pork & Kimchi was for David. He won a Kimchi eating contest when he was stationed in Korea. So proud. I took a bite, but I'm not really a fan of the kimchi flavoring, so I let David finish that one off himself.
The Tuna & Avocado with Garlic & Cheese Salad was so cute. It was not tuna like from a can, it was sashimi (?) style tuna...raw and tossed with creamy avocado, topped with this crunchy sprinkle garlic and served right in the avocado skin. I didn't taste or notice any cheese. We both enjoyed it.
I wanted to try the Deep Fried Garlic. I've heard that people like it, and I figured David would be into it because it was fried. It turned out, David wasn't interested...he suggested taking it off of our order when I gawked at the 7-item list. I insisted that it stay on (my rationale was that we probably won't see that item on many other menus). David tried it and loved it! If we hadn't gotten the Beef & Broccoli with Garlic, this would have been his hands-down favorite. I think we ate an entire head of garlic deep fried. There was a sauce to dip and then a garlic & salt sprinkle to dip it in.
The Gyoza Roll was David's least favorite of our selection, and had we not gotten the Kimchi, it would have been my least favorite too. Serves me right for daring to order something without "Garlic" in the title! They weren't bad though...they were HUGE, more like the size of a taco than a dumpling!
The Garlic Pizza was yummy too... crust like an Italian pizza, white sauce (or maybe no sauce at all?) and loads of garlic. I'll be having Garlic Pizza for breakfast. Yum.
I was hoping we'd go to the Big Dip afterward for ice cream, but after eating all of that, David said he wouldn't even be able to handle a "little dip".
So we just headed home, which is now a Japanese hotel room with FREE and lightning fast internet. No room at base lodging...but no internet in the rooms there either!

4 comments:

Susie H said...

Nom nom!! That sounds like a fun night! I love garlic, myself.

Anonymous said...

all that garlic should also keep germs away. do you think you could duplicate any of the dishes?

Dogeared said...

Mmmmm, garlic! It all sounds yummy, though I've never heard of deep-fried garlic!

Cyndi said...

Poor Edward... No Becca for him. Did I say that already.. LOL Oh that was on facebook.

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