For one of my dinners during my stay in Denver, Colorado, I decided to go to Uchi in the Five Points neighborhood for omakase.

Uchi had their ten-course omakase listed as “market price,” which I had not seen a restaurant do before (“market price” is generally reserved for individual menu items that are freshly imported on a regular basis and have frequently-changing pricing based on localized supply and demand). When I asked the waitress for the market price of the omakase, she said that it was US$305.50 for two people, which I had also never seen a restaurant do. I’m not sure if she just thought I was poor and was trying to manipulate the numbers so that it seemed cheaper, but she said that it would be just over US$150.00 per person. At that time, I believed her when she said that it was designed for two people, so my friend and I decided to order one omakase.

This might be a good time to mention that it’s actually been about a week and a half since I’ve been to this restaurant and this blog post is a little late, so I don’t quite remember all the finer details of the menu items. Not to spoil the review or anything, but this omakase was so underwhelming and disappointing that I wasn’t particularly in a rush to edit these photos and share my experience online like I do when I go to an amazing restaurant.

As an opening refreshment, we received a non-alcoholic citrus cocktail.

Our first appetizer was tai crudo with New Zealand snapper, lemon, tomato, and other vegetables.

It contained only four fairly thin and small folded slices of fish. The fish was mild and the vegetables were intensely sour and overdressed, so it tasted like I was just eating pickled vegetables instead of a well-rounded crudo dish.

For my drink, I got a zero-proof Spicy Yu made from non-alcoholic gin, yuzu honey, thai chili, and lemon.

Next, we were served a small plate of nigiri. The fish quality was good, but they were cut pretty thin and narrow so each bite wasn’t particularly satisfying.

After the nigiri was a small cut roll topped with minced seafood.

Nigiri and rolls usually come as part of the main courses of an omakase, but apparently we were still in appetizer mode, because we received one oyster each with habanero and mango. The shell of my oyster was chipped (which you can actually distinctly see in the photograph) and some of the shell seemed to have gotten into the oyster during preparation, so I had the great misfortune of having a crunchy oyster.

Next was a sashimi bowl with twelve total thin cuts of fish. This was delicious, and it almost tasted like it was dry-aged because it had an extra deep umami to it, but like everything else, each cut was way too small for it to come close to giving a strong, satisfying, full flavor per bite.

Our first warm dish was mapo tofu with crispy tofu prepared Szechuan-style and topped with shiitake ragout.

Even this was really small, which is silly because you’d think tofu is pretty cheap so they’d at least give you a refreshing portion of this, but I guess not. It had a very unique flavor profile to it, and the sauce added a nice, spicy kick to the tofu. The fried shell was a bit too thick compared to the amount of tofu that was given, but overall, I enjoyed trying out this creation.

Our second warm dish was wagyu over asparagus with a side of garlic chips in house-made sauce.

This tasted good, but again, the disappointing portion size detracted heavily from the eating experience. These cuts of wagyu were sized perfectly if you were to put two pieces in your mouth per bite… but there were only five pieces, so that would’ve gone through this course very quickly.

Afterwards, we got four more pieces of nigiri—bluefin tuna chutoro and otoro. The fish quality was great, but again, the cuts of fish were disappointingly thin and small.

We switched back over to hot dishes and got a lobster bisque.

I feel like a broken record here, but there was barely any soup here. They basically served it in a shallow plate instead of a bowl, so there wasn’t actually much bisque in the bisque. The portion size of the lobster was also tiny, and it felt like I was just eating lobster scraps instead of the actual meat of the lobster.

What little there was to eat, though, was delicious.

Up until this point, I had been questioning whether this omakase was actually supposed to be for two people, or if we had gotten baited by the waitress and my friend and I were splitting one person’s portion between ourselves. After receiving the lobster bisque in a single plate, I decided that I had been right and that this omakase isn’t truly supposed to be for two people.

I’m comfortable enough with the friend I went with, and I trust her cleanliness, so I didn’t mind dunking our spoons into the same soup together, but if I had chosen to dine with someone I wasn’t fully familiar with, this course would’ve been interesting.

From here, our meal service sort of just… stopped.

My friend likes oysters, so she put in an order for an extra oyster, à la carte for an extra US$5.00. After taking her special request, the waitress literally disappeared. We took this opportunity to use the restroom and watch the cooks at the sushi bar prepare other diners’ food, but otherwise, we were sort of just sitting there for what I believe was about half an hour.

Eventually, the waitress came back with my friend’s oyster. As if trying to one-up themselves in how small they can make each dish, they came out with an oyster that was about half the size of the oysters we had gotten as part of the omakase.

After another noticeable wait, we got our tenth and final course of the omakase, dessert: chicory and buckwheat banana cake with white coffee ice cream.

I think this was fine, but at this point, I had been let down so badly by so many different facets of the restaurant that I was mentally done with dinner and wanted to leave.

Here are some decorations from the sushi bar:

Here are some photographs of the dining tables, from the perspective of the sushi bar:

The ceiling of the restaurant had a glass opening with a view of Altius Farms on the floor above.

Here is a view of the outside of the restaurant:

In case it wasn’t clearly implied throughout my blog post, I do not recommend getting omakase at Uchi Denver. I have been to many different chef’s tasting menus and omakase experiences, and I’ve also done a fair amount of “build your own” tasting menus by ordering a large collection of small plates at fine dining restaurants, and I can confidently say that I have never gotten so little value for my money as I did at Uchi Denver.

I think there are two potential solutions that would encourage me to change my mind:

1. Keep the omakase as a couples-only experience, keep the price the same, and serve exactly double of everything.
2. Keep the portion sizes the same, cut the price in half, and market it as omakase for one.

Otherwise, I would consider Uchi Denver to be a hard pass.

A couple months ago, Burger King revealed the Mexican Street Corn, Fried Pickle Ranch, and Maple Bourbon BBQ Whoppers in a press release covering the Million Dollar Whopper Contest. In summary, people from across the United States proposed their own ideas for special Whoppers, and the top three recipes actually went into production so that customers can vote for which is the best.

I’ve always been more of a McDonald’s person than a Burger King person, and I actually don’t even remember how many years it’s been since I’ve last been at a Burger King (before this trip, obviously), but I like trying out new foods and innovative dishes, so I decided to try four Whoppers—one of each of the new Whoppers, plus one classic Whopper as a baseline.

In central Las Vegas, each of the new Whoppers costs US$6.99 for the entrée (i.e., just for the sandwich, and not as a meal or combo), but there is a special digital-exclusive deal called the “Million Dollar Whopper® Flight” that lets you buy all three at a discounted rate of US$18.99, saving US$1.98, if you order ahead online. A regular Whopper comes in at US$5.89, which brings the total to US$24.88 before taxes. Note that this is region-specific pricing, so your Whoppers may be more or less expensive than mine.

In order to give as balanced of a review as possible, I followed a controlled methodology for taste testing. I split each Whopper into fourths. I ate one quarter of each fresh Whopper, one after another, then ate another quarter of each fresh Whopper, again, one after another. Afterwards, half of each Whopper remained. I took the leftovers and refrigerated them for eight hours, and once I was no longer satiated, I retrieved and microwaved them all together for two minutes. For the second half of the taste test, I repeated the cycle—two rounds of eating a quarter of each Whopper per round until I was done.

In no particular order, first up is the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, fried pickles, pickle ranch, bacon, lettuce, and Swiss cheese.

This burger was unbelievably salty to the point where it felt like the inside of my mouth itself was getting pickled. I think a lot of the sodium might have been concentrated in the Swiss cheese, but either way, it made for a pretty unpleasant experience.

I’m generally fine with fresh pickles and will sometimes even request pickles on sandwiches that don’t usually come with pickles because I think they add a nice kick to the flavor profile, but these fried pickles were something else… in a not-so-great way. This Whopper might be great for someone who likes fried pickles, but I think they just aren’t my thing.

This Whopper was the one that had the sharpest decline in quality after refrigeration and reheating. I didn’t really want to finish the second half of this Whopper after microwaving it, but for the sake of not wasting food, I removed all the fried pickles and scraped off as much Swiss cheese as possible, which made it a bit more palatable for me.

Overall, the Fried Pickle Ranch Whopper was my least favorite out of the four.

Next is the Mexican Street Corn Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, Southwest seasoned tortilla crisps, Mexican spicy queso, street corn spread, lettuce, and tomato.

The most straightforward and easy way to put this is that this was like a ground beef taco in the form of a burger. Upon my initial bite, I was going to say that it basically tastes like a normal Whopper but with Fritos® inside, but after I started recognizing more of the flavor of the sauces, I realized it was definitely a distinct and unique Whopper, and not just a regular Whopper with one extra topping on it.

Out of the three new Whoppers, this one was my favorite.

Last but not least out of the new Whoppers is the Maple Bourbon BBQ Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, bacon, American cheese, crispy onions and jalapeños, maple bourbon barbecue sauce, and maple bacon seasoning.

This most resembled a menu item that I would expect to see on a fast food restaurant’s permanent menu. I can’t really think of any specific menu items or restaurants off the top of my head, but this was basically the same as a Texan-style BBQ cheeseburger that I’d find at a burger joint. The components of the Whopper worked well together and formed a cohesive and complementary flavor profile.

The reason why this wasn’t my favorite Whopper was because the barbecue sauce was way too sweet. I also don’t think the sauce was applied to the burger in the most effective way. Instead of splitting it so that it makes direct contact with both the toppings and the base of the patty, it was only spread on the top bun. This meant that the sauce wasn’t really absorbed by the beef patty, but it was extra absorbed by the bacon and crispy onions, so the bacon tasted like candied bacon and the crispy onions were a bit soggy.

And finally, serving as the control group, I also ordered a regular Whopper with a quarter-pound flame-grilled beef patty, tomatoes, lettuce, pickles, sliced white onions, mayonnaise, and ketchup between a toasted sesame seed bun.

I don’t know if this was just the nostalgia kicking in from when I would eat Whoppers once in a while as a kid, but in my opinion, this was overwhelmingly the best Whopper.

This had the most vegetables, which gave the sandwich the most refreshing overall flavor profile. I love raw onions, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I was trying to do as unbiased of a review as possible of these unmodified Whoppers, I would’ve asked for extra onions. Mayonnaise is my favorite condiment, but I haven’t had much of it over the past few years since I found out that I have high cholesterol and need to minimize my saturated fat consumption; that fact might’ve caused tasting the mayo in this Whopper to be extra satisfying.

As a disclaimer, even though I go to fast food restaurants somewhat often, I usually order basic and straightforward sandwiches with either beef, chicken, or fish as the meat and a balanced portion of vegetables. I try to avoid fried foods, I don’t like bacon, and I think most cheeses smell like mold and sometimes make me want to vomit. Thus, I think it’s reasonable to say that I have a “cleaner” palate, and my opinions on these Whoppers would probably align closer with people in similar situations as myself, as opposed to people who might be more used to foods with more intense and explosive flavors.

I’m glad I tried the Million Dollar Whopper® Flight, not only because it was nice participating in a limited-time event, but also because this reminded me that I am most compatible with and should probably just stick with chicken and fish sandwiches like I usually do.

Like usual, I still add at least a day or two of buffer before and after travel days when I go to a different city, so when I went to Seattle for the Sea-Meow Convention, I had some extra days in town to spend together with friends. On one of the days, I got dinner with Dani at 2120, a New American restaurant in downtown next to Amazon’s Spheres.

(Note: The lighting in this restaurant was very dim, and these photos were taken with my phone, so they’re not quite up to the same level of quality as many of my other food pictures.)

As our first appetizer, we got steak tartare made from prime New York beef topped with shallot, extra virgin olive oil, parsley, egg yolk, and pickled mustard seed with a side of house-made potato chips.

Steak tartare is often served with bread, so it was interesting to see it served with potato chips here. I think chips would be fine if it accompanied beef that was particularly strong or gamey, as the fried flavor of the chips would pierce through the beefiness. However, this steak had a smooth and mild flavor—which, in itself, is good—but I think it would’ve worked much better with plain bread, as the potato chips ended up being a bit overwhelming for this. Adjacently, I think chips would work if the beef was bland, but this tartare was properly seasoned, so the chips just ended up adding a bit too much saltiness to the overall flavor profile.

For our beverages, we ordered two drinks from the zero-proof menu: Dani ordered a No Bucks Given made from cranberry compote, ginger syrup, and fresh lime juice mixed into a soda base; and I got a Pear Citrus Spritz made from pear compote and fresh lemon with a soda base.

My pear drink demonstrated a peculiar flavor profile phenomenon in which, if I drank a normal sip, it would just taste like I was drinking lemon juice with no pear, but if I took a tiny sip to the extent that it was only enough to just barely wet my tongue, I would be able to identify the pear flavor with almost no lemon.

Our next appetizer was a half dozen Washington oysters served on half-shells with a side of apple cider mignonette. These were solid oysters with a pure taste and refreshing texture.

As our side to along with our main entrées, Dani wanted to try the beet salad with roasted pear, pistachio, whipped chèvre, and cranberry vinaigrette.

It surprisingly wasn’t bad, but there’s only so much you can do with beets, so it wasn’t particularly delicious.

Our first main dish was grilled octopus with serrano and white bean purée, chili flakes, sautéed kale, chickpeas, and burnt orange gastrique.

This would have been my favorite dish of the restaurant if it wasn’t about four times saltier than it needed to be. I could tell that the octopus had a deep, rich flavor and the texture was incredibly soft and tender, but because it was egregiously oversalted, it bordered on being bitter.

Next was smoked salmon rillette with parsley, pickled red onion, fried caper, chive oil, lemon, and aioli with a side of crostini.

This was fine and was technically exactly what the menu said it was, but I guess I didn’t really quite properly grasp what rillette was, because it wasn’t what I was expecting. This dish sort of tasted like I just opened some really high-end canned salmon dip and ate it as a spread on bread.

The density of the crostini was a bit too low. … In simpler terms, there were too many holes in the bread. I would’ve appreciated it if the bread contained more bread.

For our carb dish, we ordered house-made oxtail pappardelle with rosemary, pecorino romano, heavy cream, lemon, and oxtail jus.

This pasta came out with way too much Parmesan cheese on it. I’m not a fan of cheese, especially the types that smell extra moldy like Parmesan does, so that single-handedly ruined the dish for me. I think it would’ve been a lot better if they added fresh Parmesan tableside, because then I would’ve been able to decline it. I couldn’t really tell how the pasta was because all I could taste was the cheese, so I wasn’t really able to objectively assess the dish.

Our final entrée of the night was seared scallops with pickled shimeji, celery root purée, Japanese eggplant, and chili oil.

Dani had a portion of this dish and brought the rest back home to give to her housemates, so I only sampled half a scallop. The portion I did have was great—the scallop was thick, tender, and rich with flavor. However, almost every other component of the dish was a bit too earthy to the point of being bitter.

For dessert, we ordered some Olympic Mountain pear-raspberry sorbet.

This was a refreshing conclusion to our meal. It had a good balance of pear and raspberry flavor, and it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet. The portion size was also satisfyingly large, and was way more than you’d get at an ice cream shop for the price.

I took some photos of the restaurant. It looks empty because we were one of the first reservations of the day and I snapped these pictures on my way to the restroom right after we arrived, but by the time we were done dining, the restaurant was pretty full and bustling.

Although 2120 wasn’t a bad restaurant, I thought it was a little bit underwhelming across the board. They market themselves as fine dining, but I think they spent too much on the perception and presentation of the restaurant, and not enough on improving the dishes.

Usually, I’m able to get a general gist of the theme of what I enjoyed or what I think could be improved, but I couldn’t really come up with something like that for 2120. It seems like my likes and dislikes were quite scattered, with different kinds of compliments and critiques being applicable for different dishes (which explains why my dish-by-dish feedback above was fairly diverse).

I found the environment of the restaurant to be pleasant, and I had no complaints about the service. However, the only menu item I found to be worth the money was the sorbet, with everything else not quite meeting expectations at their respective pricepoints.

I guess it is possible that I was so unlucky that I somehow only picked their mediocre dishes and managed to avoid all their specialties or something, but based on my dining experience this day, I think there are a lot of other restaurants I would recommend before this one.

I recently came back from New Zealand to the United States of America, and I am headed out-of-state again shortly. I used (and will be using) Los Angeles International Airport for my travels due to it servicing convenient non-stops to both destinations, and while in Los Angeles County in between trips, I decided to meet up with one of my friends who was also in Los Angeles while visiting from Phoenix.

We decided to go to Spoon & Pork, a Filipino comfort food restaurant. They have a location in Silver Lake, but we decided to go to the one in Sawtelle, a neighborhood near Santa Monica. I wanted to try as many different dishes as possible, so we opted for the Kanin Club, a 90-minute unlimited menu tasting experience for US$65.00 per person.

Our first appetizer was lumpia shanghai, also known as Filipino spring rolls, with pork, shrimp, and sweet chili lime sauce.

Our plate of carbohydrates that we ate little-by-little throughout our meal was rice with fried garlic confit oil. I’m a big fan of garlic, so as you’d expect, I was a big fan of this fried rice.

Our first small plate was bistek with skirt steak, sweet onions, and lemon-soy gravy. The steak was incredibly tender and flavorful, and this ended up being my favorite dish of the meal.

Our second small plate was tocino, which is apple-cured grilled pork belly with atchara. I usually don’t like pork belly because of how fatty it is, but this pork belly was amazing. The flavor of the fat was nice and smooth, and although the texture was that of what you’d expect from pork belly fat, it seemed to mix well with the meat, more quickly than what I’d expect.

Our first large plate was patita, which is slow-cooked deep-fried pork shank with chili garlic glaze. This portion was much larger than I expected. It wasn’t quite as good as the pork belly, but it was still tender and had a good kick of flavor to it. The left-on pork rind added some good variety through its crispy texture.

Next was twice-cooked patatas bravas with datu puti aioli. They came out blisteringly hot and I think I scorched my tongue a bit on them, but they were still a solid potato dish—crispy on the outside and very soft on the inside.

Lately, I’ve been watching quite a few YouTube videos by Jessica Lee Seul, a former K-pop star turned content creator. A few months ago, I saw a video of her trying different sisig dishes at various different price points, and the memory of that video inspired me to also try sisig for the first time, at this restaurant.

… I hate it. It’s basically extremely salty pig scraps.

As our final dish, I ordered another beef dish. I think this was tapa, or beef sirloin strips, but I don’t exactly remember. This was good, but not quite to the level of bistek.

Here’s a shot of the restaurant’s interior.

I’m not really sure how the math adds up exactly because I forgot to take a picture of the in-store menu and the prices associated with the different portion sizes, but from what I felt, the all-you-can-eat seemed a bit overpriced. It was a bit more expensive than other all-you-can-eat places you’d see of this nature, and on top of that, the regular menu prices are actually pretty affordable, so it made the AYCE look extra high. I have a suspicion that we might have actually saved money if we just ordered everything à la carte.

The garlic rice, bistek, and tocino were amazing, and I would add this restaurant to my regular rotation if it wasn’t so deep west and far away from the places where I usually stay when I’m in Los Angeles County.

With PAX West having just wrapped up earlier this month and TwitchCon starting two weeks later, I took this lull in my schedule in between the two events as an opportunity to visit my parents in the Chicagoland suburbs.

I’ve been going to a lot of chef’s tasting menu and omakase restaurants lately, but I found out that my parents had never been to an omakase experience before, so I decided to treat them to their very first one at Good Sushi in Lincolnshire, Illinois.

As our first course, we received a vinaigrette shot with oyster and ikura. All my photos of the glass were out of focus so I don’t have any to share, but it was a good opener that had a strong kick of sourness to get us primed for our meal.

Next was chawanmushi, which is Japanese steamed egg custard. This was pure chawanmushi with nothing added into it, which was a bit unexpected (as there is usually mushrooms, sea urchin, roe, and/or vegetables added in), but it was still good in quality and had a clean flavor.

Next was octopus atop a medium tomato filled with cheese. I’m usually not a big fan of cheese, but whatever type they used was mild enough that it didn’t overwhelm the dish. The taste of the octopus had something distinct and different to it that I couldn’t quite figure out, but the flavor was good and the texture was sat­is­fy­ing.

Afterwards, we received abalone topped with sauce made from abalone intestines.

This was my favorite dish of the meal. This was the most tender abalone I had ever had, and the chef said that it was probably because he prepares it by steaming it over six hours. This was my first time ever having abalone intestines, and it wasn’t quite like anything else I’ve ever tasted before; the closest thing I can think of is monkfish liver, but even then, the intestines still had something very unique to it that I can only explain as a weighted blanket of umami.

Our next dish was fish shoulder, though I managed to miss what kind of fish it was, and I somehow couldn’t tell just by the taste. This was thoroughly marinated with a house-made sauce, so it tasted like generic but very clean fish with a good amount of saltiness and a very light tinge of sweetness.

The chef added a nice touch to this shoulder dish—he made sure to keep track of the plates so that my parents each got one shoulder off the same fish.

While we were consuming the previous dishes, the chef started preparing the sashimi for our nigiri.

While the chef continued to slice the sashimi, the waiter came out with some miso soup and side dishes.

Our next eight items were eight pieces of nigiri.

The fish for all eight pieces were cut very thick. Usually at countertop omakase experiences, you grab each piece of nigiri with your fingers and finish it in one bite, but these were large enough that I had each in two bites. Because of that, the portion size added up quickly and was pretty filling and sat­is­fy­ing.

As our final piece of sushi, we received a spicy tuna hand roll. I’m personally not the biggest fan of spicy tuna because I think the sauce overwhelms the flavor of the tuna, but still, this was a nice addition to the menu to have some variety.

For dessert, we each got a fairly sizable portion of matcha tiramisu topped with strawberry.

This was a little bit too sweet for my preference, but the earthiness of the matcha powder helped balance things out a bit.

Here’s a shot of the kitchen area beside the bar where we were served.

Omakase was $125 per person, and with $33.75 in taxes and $72 for gratuity, the total came to US$480.75.

The omakase chef is the owner of the restaurant, and he is Korean. That wasn’t too helpful for me because I didn’t get to interact with him much considering his somewhat limited English, but it was great for my parents, because they were able to talk with him in their native language and learn more about the food they were served.

I thought this was a solid omakase dinner landing squarely within satisfactory expectations of a meal at this pricepoint. To add some context, I’ve been to a lot of nice restaurants in major coastal cities, so my rating has that kind of perspective behind it; with that in mind, you could argue that this restaurant was actually very good, considering that it is out in the suburbs over 30 miles away from downtown Chicago and likely does not have access to the same resources and quality of ingredients as coastal cities.

If you’re interested in checking it out, note that you’ll need to book a reservation at least 48 hours ahead. I imagine this is one of the side effects of being in a less populated area—they have an à la carte menu, but it seems like omakase is not always fully booked, so you’ll need to give the chef a heads up so he can shop for fresh ingredients and put together the day’s menu for you.