pdxPLATE Izakaya-MAX Party Crawl (aka PIMP Crawl)

Haha. I am so into this idea. We did a mini crawl last night: Departure (just to see how much lustre is lost on a crappy, rainy day. Answer: a lot. outdoor bartenders looked depressed.) THen Ping, then later dinner at biwa.

Seriously, I'd love to try Syun & Yuzu since i never have, and that seems like a great way to do it conscionably.

Orders have been placed here at Syun. Didn't have the sake we wanted and they wanted to upsell us to the Go 55. Which we drink all the time. Itching for something different¹

Damn, why am I at work?

The karaage are in and they're really nice. Has the nice fatty flavor that Biwa seems to lack. The shio yaki saba is okay, that's definitely one that Biwa does better. ²

Hamachi kama is all kinds of win. Okonomiyaki was standard; a bit overdressed but they always are. BBQ ribs were great too. Pitcher of sapporo and a bottle of tahekai junmai ³

Who else is PIMPing it?

It's a little too early in the evening to be having this conversation but I'm not stopping it.⁴

Me, Flynn and wifey, CO and HoldTheBeans, Angelhair and MissingBlakes. Sylvan and Joy later.

I've fed the wife and am trying to get the weekend play time with the kid out of the way, so I might try to meet up for the Yuzu portion of your gig. If I'm not there I probably opted to stay home and douche.

Pretty funny running into the goodist randomly on the MAX on the way to Yuzu ⁵

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 19:54
PolloElastico has arrived to meet us in Yuzu. Chikurin Depth bottled tapped. Talking about cocktails over sake cause we're drunks. Food on the way like the gyu negima and the kamo.⁶

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 20:08
Kamo roast (thinly sliced roasted duck with grilled green onion). Gyu negima (grilled ribeye beef wrap green onion served with teriyaki sauce)

Yuzu's karaage destroy's Syun. Some fried spring toll of some sort with a salty interior I didn't get to try. A stir-fried vegetable dish with thinly sliced pork (yasai itame) ⁷

Sauce...this kinda makes sense....ever heard of Gang Gang Dance?? Well if you have (and I think so) then you will agree that their 2008 album called "Saint Dymphna" is AMAZING!!! -- get it?? pub crawl with friends...Gang..Gang..Dance.

Leaving Yuzu. PolloElastico is joining in but goodist is leaving. Meeting up with Joy and Sylvan at Tanuki. Hm and the flask of whiskey seems to be dead. Mm those two bottles of Chikurin were tasty. I thought the roast duck only really worked with that mustard to amp it up, similarly the gyu negima needs a shake of togarashi

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 20:57
Oh my god I'm starting to sober up. Now that we're done with that side of The Hill, it's time to start cranking it up a notch. Bam! Talking about how good the uni is at Tanuki so I'm starting to get kinda HONGRY. ⁸

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 21:18
I'd like to point out that I just walked out of walgreens on 21dt to buy a pack of cigarettes. Let's get some strippers and coffee going so I can get all my vices addressed in one swell foop

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 21:30
I gotta say that arriving at Tanuki in this point of the evening means that the tough part is over. I can do the Tanuki-Biwa combo in my sleep. However I know it means that I'll be cranking up the effort as well. Tall liter-sized cans of Asahi have gone around but I'm rocking my own bottle Tozai Honjozo. I'm hoping there's still some roast goat left. All the while working on my first hit of nicotine in a week. ⁹

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 22:02
After doing two traditional Japanese places, showing up Tanuki is just a whole different level. Lots of great hamachi, the hotate sudachi is stellar is also, I'm nursing my own bottle of Tozai Honjozo. The last few crawfish of the evening, though I'm saving myself for Roux tomorrow. Now that the nicotine is in my system I'm maintaining really well.¹⁰

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 22:31
Three stops deep and it's looking like Voicebox might be the next stop. Heh, I'm not too upset, I went to Biwa earlier in the week and I'm kinda over the whole mass transit thing at the moment. A plate of some excellent uni kept making its way around the table and it seemed like only I had some of it, making handrolls with some the small of rice I ordered, too. Wondered where the natto I ordered went, but in the end it would make its way around the table as well, only everyone also makes a face.¹¹

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 23:03
Voicebox is full. Gonna cab it to Biwa. Come on, Radio Cab

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 23:34
Made to Biwa. Drove since radio cab wasn't coming and I've had an hour to sober up. Can't really drink here at Biwa as a result, but tis okay. You know I would have been really upset if the evening had ended anywhere else, so ultimately I'm happy but MAN am I glad I bought a pack of cigarettes because I definitely needed to chill out after finally arriving here on the Eastside.

I like the scene here. Good energy to the room that still lets me sit and be quiet among the pandemonium. Don't know what it is; it's certainly a cool quality of Biwa.

I had late night eats here earlier in the week but I kinda want some kimchi.¹²

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Postby SauceSupreme on 2009-06-20 23:49
Grilled rice ball, pickled saba, kimchi, and a couple of skewers (including the excellent beef hanger steak skewer) and the shioyaki saba too. I'm nursing a bottle of water but the PIMP crawl is still 7 people deep, so I'm really proud of everyone.¹³

Sounds like a success. I'll look forward to hearing the finer points tomorrow over crawfish. We were up on the hill at a barbecue at some friends, but if you do another P.I.M.P I want in!

Great meeting all of you, thanks for the hospitality!

I'm a bit let down that everyone seemed to keep it together - I was hoping for terrible tales of debauchery by the end of the night.

Back home. I'm going to go David Foster Wallace style and go back and footnote all the posts.^a

^aYeah, kinda like this.b

¹ We arrived at Syun a little late after trying to decide which of the last two Hillsboro stops would be closest to getting to Yuzu. Honestly, if you've traveled an hour from the city center, the one or two block difference won't matter.

Syun was pretty busy this Saturday night; the main room was full, but there were a few open seats at the bar. A good mix of locals and businessmen, it seemed. The menu here is likewise pretty straightforward; before we go at it, we tried ordering some sake. They were out of all the ones we wanted to try, and she tried offering to us some sake that we have all the damn time. In the end, we ended up going for the Tahekai Junmai.

Likewise they had trouble getting us a pitcher of Asahi, end we ended up with Sapporo. A bottle of sake and a pitcher of beer seemed to hold the table down pretty well.

² If I'm being honest, the best karaage that I've had lately came from 50 Plates! No, the fried chicken here and the salt-grilled mackerel were just decent. One thing I'll point out is that Syun is the only time I've had shioyaki saba mackerel served with all the bones still on it. I imagine that this is a bit more down-homey, and I got no problem with it but I know some might.

³ No picture of the collar, but really it's the best part of the fish (even more so than the belly, which is deliciously fatty, but the collar is just achingly tender). The okonomiyaki is standard type stuff, tossed with lots of bonito flakes while it's hot so that it actually moves with the heat. The BBQ beef ribs were pretty good, too.

I'm glad that we started at Syun, as it'd been so long since my last visit, but honestly I don't think I need to go back here for a while. It has a huge menu, but so does Murata and at least Murata has better sushi and is a more central location.

⁴ We were on the train, and I'm sure we were talking about Ron Jeremy's new Club Sesso or something like that. The conversation really only devolved from there.

⁵ But we continue on our merry way, and I see that there's a bunch of people coming on board the MAX so I decide to express my drunkenness by singing Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl". Much to my surprise, our very own thegoodist randomly boards the train. Introductions are made all around, and we convince him to at least share a meal with us at Yuzu.

Now that we had the fried chicken back-to-back, Yuzu possesses a meatier flavor (thus allowing more of the chicken to come through) but still has that satisfying crunchiness and fattiness that you want from fried chicken.¹⁴

⁶ PolloElastico makes an appearance as well. While we're all noshing down on gyu negima (bacon-wrapped steak, pictured above right) and more fried chicken, he puts in an order of ramen. No one complains.

Tastes of the tonkotsu ramen make the table. That stuff is delicious. It's been so long since I've had that and the other ramens at Yuzu, so it's kinda due for a revisit.

⁷ Yuzu also excels at their vegetarian options. We've had many nice salads in the past, and the shishitou peppers are always a nice hit. The yasai itame, listed in their stir-fried section, actually resembled a bit of a Chinese stir fry with bits of sliced pork tossed through it. Okay so our order wasn't vegetarian, but there are veggie options.

The bacon-wrapped steak was my pick for the must-order dish at Yuzu, but I'd also be willing to give that title to the roast duck, pictured below. It's served with a small dab of this great Japanese mustard that really makes the meat pop so to speak, while still maintaining the flavor of duck.

Yuzu showed up strong. We rolled in, nine people, they seat us immediately (a feat at Yuzu -- they were turning numerous people away while we were there; the restaurant was already packed), drinks are brought out, food emerges fast and everyone's happy.

I think one of the best ways to describe Yuzu is that it's a homestyle izakaya. The decor is bare bones minimalist, but still neatly appointed and well presented. The food coming out of the kitchen is top notch, and you almost get the feel that you're at a large family gathering rather than a restaurant.

⁸ I'm going to mix up the timing a bit and use this uni reference as an opportunity to actually show the uni that showed up at the end. Hawtness. I'm a big fan of the uni here, and I trust Tanuki's ability to select only the good stuff. My favorite application is an uni onigiri, a rice ball just stuffed with it. I was doing something similar here at Tanuki: I'd ordered a small bowl of rice and was making uni hand rolls.

⁹ In fact, there was enough of the goat yagii maki left for everyone to have a bit. That's just fine as this dish is quite rich, and any more probably would have knocked us all out. But by this point in the evening we'd actually grown in numbers.

¹⁰ PolloElastico must still have been hungry 'cause he ordered about a half dozen orders of the hamachi sashimi. Which all got eaten by everyone. Yellowtail is always one of my favorites, and the sashimi here is particularly good. The yellowtail also showed up later as part of a handroll setup.

Oh, and I finally take a good shot of the hotate sudachi, the scallops in that spicy citrus broth:

I forgot to mention that we also ordered the kimchi in addition to the crawfish. A round of the wild boar meatballs made its rounds. A chicken dish of some sort. There was actually several "Milton" moments when a plate would make its way around the table and come back to me empty. Heh, I ended up getting the last laugh as I scarfed down the uni, making hand rolls using the nori left over from the yellowtail dish. Low self-esteem propped up by sea urchin.

The jump from Yuzu to Tanuki isn't so much apples and oranges, more like apples and a punch in the face. I appreciate the classics at Yuzu, again, it's a homestyle izakaya, but Tanuki almost has an improvisational aspect to the food. The flavors are just bigger! bolder!! spicier!! axe to the head!!!!

¹¹ Definitely over the mass transit thing at that point. We gave the strict PIMP Crawl our college try but admittedly fell one stop short.

¹² Ask and ye shall receive. Tanuki and Biwa both do pickles and kimchi, but they just have different styles and approaches. Biwa's has more of a Korean chili paste gochujang aspect to it, whereas Tanuki goes a little wetter and runnier. And even among Korean joints, there's always going to be variances among homemade kimchi. I'm hard pressed to make a value judgment that puts one ahead of the other. If I had to really choose, I'd pick Tanuki if I want to eat it with rice, whereas the Biwa kimchi tastes best with grilled meat.

¹³ By my accounting, there were five who made it to all four stops on the PIMP Crawl: myself, Angelhair, MissingBlakes, ConcreteOatmeal and HoldTheBeans. Flynn and wifey made it for three, PolloElastico showed up for two, Joy and Sylvan for one and a half, and Goodist for one. Not a bad showing out of the Plate!

The salt-grilled saba was excellent, and it still ranks as my favorite dish here at Biwa (even moreso than the vaunted ramen -- I think it's time to stop thinking of this place as less of a ramenya and more of a yakitoriya). They even grill balls of rice really well with their yaki onigiri.

I've always been up and down over how I feel about Biwa and I'm definitely currently in an up cycle. I think the vibe is great, the food is great, it's close to a lot of other places so there's stumbling opportunities as well.

That brings the PIMP Crawl to a close. There was some idle chatter about hitting up the 12th and Hawthorne carts or maybe Clyde Common or maybe KOifusion but honestly we've had a long haul. Hopped onto the westbound MAX at 5pm, finally left Biwa just after midnight. I definitely could have had another drink, but after seven hours out on the town already, it would just be gilding the lily.

My favorites items at each spot: the hamachi collar at Syun, the roast duck at Yuzu, the uni at Tanuki and the salt-grilled mackerel at Biwa. My favorite sake was the Chikurin "Depth" at Yuzu.

¹⁴ Wasn't part of the crawl, but hey, honorable mention goes to the chicken nuggets at 50 Plates.

What a blast. Great company, great food, great booze. We gotta put more of these together. I see the #4-Division/Fessenden in our future...

Eating and drinking more than my fill at three places set us back $60 per person I think. Sauce can correct my math if I'm wrong, since I owe him the ca$h and he'll break my knees. That's not a cheap night out and a weekly crawl would be prohibitive, but we certainly did all three places right (and it sounds like Biwa was great too, if a bit public-transit-FAILy.) I think the walks through parking lots in Beaverton and Hillsboro were full of wonderment and magic.

Some takeaways:

-Syun needs to get their shit together. All the pieces are in place: The same great atmosphere being in that building, a great sake list, and a varied menu with lots to choose from. Unfortunately, the service is confused and too many dishes are a C+. I think they do best on the cooked fish items. That was a sorry-ass excuse for karaage, punctuated by the delicious sodium-forward version we followed with at Yuzu. I'd need to be in the area to hit them up with any frequency because they aren't worth a special trip past Yuzu, at least that's my opinion based on the last two visits.

-OTOH, the 20 min or so MAX Ride to Beaverton TC for a trip to Yuzu? An easy yes. Especially when you factor in CKR next door. Yuzu was at their best last night, easily dealing with a party of our size, booze and food brought out in a nice pace, and every dish being tasty. That yasai itame is one of the things I order every visit. Gotta get yer veggies and might as well lace them up with pork! TheGoodist was sage in his liberal use of the togarashi on the gyu negima. mmmm..salty and spicy.

-As much as the trip reaffirmed how much I like Yuzu for the overall izakaya experience, it's clear once again that Tanuki is on another level. Janis makes dishes that both qualify as good complement to beer and sake, but are as creative as I've seen in town. Sauce is right that much of the food is bigger, bolder, spicier..but how about that goddamn hamachi? That's just sublime awesomeness every time. Good thing Pollo ordered six rounds of it.

-I think an important component of an izakaya is how they handle the merriment. We were boisterous at Yuzu and our usual obnoxious selves at The Nook. In both places, this wasn't a problem at all. The booze and dishes kept on rolling.

It was a pleasure meeting TheGoodist and talking sorcery involving Arrack, and of course a fine group to journey across the freakin' state with. Mme. Flynn had herself a jolly good time as well, and says you guys can be her wingman anytime here at Top Gun.

Nooooooo! I can't believe I missed an izakaya crawl. No emoticon is fitting.

But it was such a success that everyone wants to do it again soon, right?

We're already talking about how to do the next one. I for one would nominate that Murata actually enter the conversation. They have tatami rooms and a very extensive cooked food selection in addition to their sushi, which is still one of the better ones in town.

Yes, we discussed 86ing Syun and replacing it, but I warned ye: Any third stop on the crawl better not be solemn and formal. We weren't exactly re-enacting Masterpiece Theater by the time we hit Tanuki.

Not to point out the obvious, but wouldn't Ping or Depature make more sense than Murata, despite a certain someone's irrational dislike of one of these?

I don't think Ping or Departure claim to be izakayas...?

But neither does Murata, right? I dunno, maybe it does, I've never been.

Murata is a sushi-ya first and foremost. They do have some interesting cooked dishes, so I guess you could say it doubles as a restaurant. It's not an izakaya.

Departure is what happens if you beam the older collar-poppers into a dystopian future with a nice space station.

Ping's a restaurant. With good booze and dishes that pretty much fit in the whole izakaya spirit, even if it's not a true izakaya like Yuzu. I think it would qualify for our purposes of quality food and drink geared towards sharing.

who doesnt like Departure? I was just there tonight with some Sake Brewers from Japan, and we had a great time! would love to go back!

msg, to point out the obvious, why would a non-drinker have any interest in an Izakaya crawl? I mean, its like asking a Mormon about a cathouse......

Given the noise level of our crowd, we'd better hit Murata first.

Out of curiousity I took a look at Departure's website.

Holy SHIT.
$12 for jetfuel Gekkikan?
To put in in perspective an 18 litre cube of that stuff costs $30

Yeah-I'll go on record as saying I don't really like Departure. I just don't feel comfortable there and feel like I'm on the top of the fucking Space Needle paying 20% extra for the view (both of the city and pretty, pretty people). It just ain't my thing.
The food - meh. The drinks - double meh.

"We weren't exactly re-enacting Masterpiece Theater by the time we hit Tanuki."

Perhaps not but we all enjoyed your re-enactment of Pink Flamingos by way of Lord of the Flies.

Yeah, ditto. Food was pretty average and the atmosphere was a bit too "hot chicks with douchebags" for my taste. Didn't hate it, but can't think of a good reason to return.