Japanese Series: Asian Food

Image taken from weheartit.com

Hello and welcome to the second post in my Japanese series!

As you can see from the title, my second post is about Asian food. I would have titled it Japanese food, but I think Asian food covers it pretty well as there are 3 places I’m going to mention that cover both Chinese and Japanese dishes, as well as drinks.

My mouth is watering just thinking about this post, not good! Best get on with it. 😛

There is plenty of choice in the UK when it comes to Asian food and drink and with more and more restaurants opening every year, the possibilities are endless. Whilst two of the places I’ll be naming are chains that are all over the UK (as well as in some other countries), one is only based in Birmingham so I apologise for this in advance, I have tried to add an equivalent of this in areas like London.

YO! Sushi

This is one of the popular chains that runs throughout the UK and also the first restaurant I will be talking about. Personally I haven’t been to YO! Sushi… Yet, but I want to go! As the name of this restaurant suggests, you can get sushi there but there are hundreds of Japanese inspired dishes to choose from, not just sushi and with over 80 dishes to choose from, you’ll have plenty to set your heart on.

Image taken from yosushi.com

How YO! Sushi works is that you go into the restaurant, sit down and pick up whatever dish you like the sound of from off of the conveyor belt. Each dish has a colour coded plate and depending on which colour you pick up, depends how much that dish will cost. As well as that you can order hot or cold dishes from the servers or chefs. At the end of your meal all your empty planets are counted for and added to the bill at the end. Simple!

There are so many dishes to choose from including hot (soups & broths, hot classics, rice & noodles, and katsu & tempura), sushi, salads, desserts, and of course specials.

I’m going to share with you some of the (okay maybe ALL) dishes I really want to try when I go to YO! Sushi, which I’m hoping will be soon (Valentine’s Day, maybe?)!

Hot (FYI most of them are chicken based!):

Chicken Yakitori, Chicken Teriyaki, Chicken Gyoza, Duck Gyoza, Chicken Katsu, and Chicken Katsu Curry.

Sushi:

Salmon Maki, Tuna Maki, and Spicy Chicken ISO.

Desserts:

Chocolate Dorayaki, Custard Dorayaki, and Chocolate Mochi.

Specials:

Duck Katsu & Moromi Miso.

I can’t wait to try out the food in YO Sushi, but I’m making sure not to spend too much at the same time! I’ve been told by my friend Poppy that it can all add up rather quickly! Also you don’t HAVE to sit in to eat at YO! Sushi, you can take food away as well, which I think is great.

Moo-Cha, Birmingham

This is a Bubble Tea and Frozen Yogurt stall that is in The Bullring in Birmingham and it’s an amazing place! Every time I go into town I make sure to pop to the stall to get my Bubble Tea fix! Bubble Tea is an Asian drink and is loved by both Japanese and Chinese people, as well as pretty much everyone else now thanks to all the Bubble Tea shops that are popping up everywhere.

Bubble Tea is a drink that originated from Taiwan and is also known as boba tea, pearl milk tea and tapioca pearl tea. Bubble Tea can be enjoyed cold or warm, as well as fruity or milky.

When I first tried Bubble Tea I was alarmed by the odd sensation I got whilst drinking it, due to what the squishy balls (tapioca pearls or popping bubbles) feel and taste like when they come up the straw in the drink. With tapioca pearls they’re squishy and taste like a coffee/chocolate flavour, whilst the popping bubbles can come in all sorts of flavours, usually fruity. My favourite are strawberry. When these enter your mouth they usually pop and when they burst they release the flavour that you chose.

As well as these, you can also get jellies which in my opinion are vile! I can’t really say much on these other than them not being like proper jelly at all but more of a solid version of jelly and very chewy. They aren’t to my liking, but they might be to you.

Bubble Tea is something everyone needs to try at least once and everyone I have introduced it to has loved it!

Image taken from moo-cha.com

At Moo-Cha you can get all sorts of flavours to create all sorts of yummy combinations, just take a look at the menu above!

When you arrive at the stall you will be asked what flavour you want, which tea you would like with that (green, black or no tea), how you would like your drink to be (hot, cold, with ice or slush), and what toppings you would like (tapioca pearls, popping bubbles or jellies).

If you were to order a Bubble Coffee however, you would of course skip the part of the order where you pick tea. As of yet I haven’t tried coffee, but I think I will be next time I visit.

I’m going to give you a couple of my favourite drinks to order from the menu, just to give you an example of how you would order a drink from Moo-Cha.

Bubble Tea £3.00:

Milky Green Tea Latte with Green Tea, Hot, and with Tapioca Pearls.

Fruity Green Apple with Black Tea, Cold, and with Popping Bubbles in Strawberry.

Bubble Coffee £3.00:

Coconut, Cold, and with Tapioca Pearls.

The possibilities are endless with Moo-Cha Bubble Tea and they also have a Loyalty Card scheme so after you’ve bought (from memory) 10 Bubble Tea drinks or Frozen Yogurt’s you can claim one for free!

I know if you Google search for Bubble Tea shops in your area of the UK you will find loads! I know London have Bubbleology, which I really want to go to in the future.

Wagamama

Last weekend I FINALLY lost my Wagamama virginity when my boyfriend and I ventured to Milton Keynes for a day of shopping. It was amazing and better than we expected and we both want to go back again already.

Wagamama is inspired by traditional Japanese ramen bars and Asian flavours. The name of Wagamama has always intrigued me and I always wondered what it stood for or meant and upon checking out their website I discovered that it means ‘naughty child” in Japanese, which is pretty cool!

Like most Japanese inspired menus they feature a wide variety of noodle and rice dishes and you can choose from classic ramen, which is a big bowl of noodles in soap, teppan which is noodles cooked on a hot, flat griddle, and kare which is noodles in a coconut based soup, but there are many more dishes served with rice.

The great thing about Wagamama is that you don’t have to sit in to enjoy your food, you can take you food away as take-away too, which I think is great!

When my boyfriend and I went to Wagamama we noticed how the seating was rather odd, yet delightful at the same time. We were sat at a bench that sat two people on side and two or four on the other side, so you would essentially have to share your table with someone. As well as that you have someone come over to take your order for you, both drinks, food and dessert and bring your food over for you quickly. You can also watch your food being  prepared and cooked for your fresh in their kitchen, which I really liked.

As we hadn’t been to Wagamama before we went for something we always order if it’s on the menu, pulled pork! We opted for Pulled Pork Gyoza, which came with a spicy sauce. It arrived in no time and bloody hell it was delicious! We both said we could have eaten them all day if we were given the option.

For our main we opted for Chicken Katsu Curry, we’ve had this before at restaurant in Coventry but this was a hundred times better than the one we’d previously had! The chicken was succulent and beautiful, the rice gorgeous and sticky, but the curry was delicious and I ate as much of it as I could get from the plate, onto the spoon.

We didn’t get a desert in the end as we were rather full, but the choice of desserts is rather nice, although I do wish they would do Bubble Tea!

I loved going to Wagamama as the staff were friendly, quick to take our order and get our food out to us but most of the food was amazing and just writing this post is making my mouth water for it again.

I can’t wait to go again as I have loads of dishes I want to try including:

Duck Gyoza, Chicken Kare Lomen, Mahi Mahi Curry, Chicken Ramen, and Grilled Duck Ramen.

Overall we loved Wagamama and we can’t wait to go again, whenever that will be!

I was going to try and mention more places on this post but 1. This post is getting awfully long and 2. It’s making me bloody hungry!

Do you like Asian food? If so do you prefer Japanese or Chinese? Let me know in the comments down below!

As well as that, have you been to any of the places mentioned in this post? If so do you like them, or not? If you haven’t been to any of these places, do you intend to in the future? Let me know all your answers in the comments down below too.

Well I hope you enjoyed this post, I know I enjoyed writing it! Stay tuned for post number 3 in this series, where I’ll be talking about places I want to visit in Japan, which will feature a special guest! So make sure to keep your eyes peeled for that next Wednesday.

Until next time, take care all!

Adventure Time With Animals, Part Two! *WARNING PICTURE HEAVY AGAIN THUS V. LONG POST*

So yesterday I wrote about mine and my boyfriends day out to Hoar Park, a children’s farm in Nuneaton, which you can find here if you haven’t read it yet.

We went on Saturday afternoon and whilst it wasn’t the warmest of days, it was still lovely and it didn’t rain, which we were both glad about… Even if I did have my umbrella at the ready!

After we had looked around the farm and all the animals there, we went onto the part of the farm where the smaller animals were kept and I think it’s safe to say we spent most of the time there. The animals in there were just so damn cute and I felt a little sad to leave a certain little dude behind, I think we both wished we could have taken him home with us on Saturday.

 

The guinea pigs we saw in the little animal hut were so adorable! There was two pens full of them and one set of them were called The Chocaholic’s because they were all shades of brown and white. These guys were quick when you went to try and take photographs of them, but I’m rather proud of this quick snap I got of this little guy whilst he ate some of his food. I like how cute he looks with some sawdust on his head. He happily sat there eating whilst I took picture after picture, but this one turned out to be the best. Although they were all quick, they were really friendly and didn’t shy away from the camera when taking pictures of them.

The rabbits were all pretty chilled and for the majority were either sleeping or lying down twitching their little noses. They just look so fluffy and cozy as they sleep and huddle together. I love how the rabbits lay down on their sides to sleep, they looked so peaceful and at the same time pretty shattered! We’ve all gone home after a long day at university, work or even seeing friends and lay down on our beds or sofas the same way! Both the guinea pigs and rabbits were for sale and I was surprised to see so many in there, I’d love to have taken one of these home.

I love turtles and tortoises and when I get my own place I would love to get one of my own, this being said I’d probably be too nervous to touch it incase I hurt it! I was once told from a tortoise owner that if you turn it upside down, you could kill it… If this is true I’d be so scared of it ever happening! Anyhoo, these two guys were pretty funny and I could have watched them for ages. The little one kept trying to have some fun with the larger one and the big kid in me thought it was a funny thing to watch. I love the last picture in this trio, they’re just staring at me whilst I wave at them. Damn I need a tortoise of my own!

As I mentioned in the post yesterday, I had never seen a black duck before and it really brought some sort of childish excitement out in me. They look so beautiful, so when we went into where the chicks and ducklings were kept and spotted these, I couldn’t stop saying, “Aww!” in the highest pitch I could manage with a sore throat. There was only two or three of them in there, but they were a real treat to see and I couldn’t stop taking pictures of them.

The yellow ducklings were just as cute as the black ones and my boyfriend got this really cute one of a duckling looking directly at him/the camera. I love the little bits of fluff on their heads, I don’t know if this is their feathers malting away or if it’s a tuft of feathers they have on their head. Either way it’s cute and makes it look like they have an afro! Before we left we noticed one of the chicks was sat on this ducklings head whilst he was lying down, eventually falling to sleep. We joked saying, “Get your butt out of my face!” it was rather comical and yet childish at the same time. 😛

This is one of my favourite pictures that my boyfriend took. In their little cage by the chicks and ducklings pens, was this little yellow budgie. It sat quietly in its cage watching us look around and posed for pictures whenever we took any.  I took a couple, like my boyfriend did but this was the best one out of them all! Looks like such a photogenic, poser, doesn’t it? The picture shows off the colour of its feathers perfectly too, a lovely greeny yellow, I bet it would have been nice to stroke the little budgie.

Now I’ve saved the best pictures until last on this post. This little dude here really cheered me up on Saturday and my boyfriend and I really wanted to take him home with us, as well as pick him up to snuggle, but of course we weren’t allowed to. We took so many pictures of him and as much as I wanted to show you all of them, it would have made this post WAY TOO LONG and it’s long enough already as it is. Maybe I’ll include the  other photographs on another post sometime, we’ll see. This is a little male bunny and boy did he have a photogenic personality! At first he seemed rather quiet, but as soon as we started taking pictures of him he hopped over towards us and posed like a good ‘un! He looked so soft and fluffy and rocked some awesome black rings around his eyes, as well as a cute little black dot on his right ear, which I thought was adorable. He cost £25 to buy and I really do hope he goes to a good home, how has anyone not bought him yet? I wish either of us could have bought him and brought him home with us. I was rather sad to leave when we did, purely because of how cute this little dude was. I hope my boyfriend and I can go back to this farm in the future and still see him there!

After we finally finished looking around the farm we popped into the cafe to have some tea and lunch. The tea was really good and after our lunch we were full. It was nice to sit down for a bit and we even discussed some more adventure ideas for us to go on. After that we popped out into the field nearby to take my pictures for my what I wore post as well as some personal pictures of us both to have.

I had a wonderful day with my boyfriend at the farm and I’d love to go there again in the future!

If you live near Nuneaton, I suggest you go to Hoar Park yourself, whether you have children, or not! It’s a lovely little place and I can imagine it being really nice during the colder autumn months and in the summer time too.

I really enjoy doing these adventure posts with my boyfriend and I can’t wait to do more of these in the future, hopefully with vlogs too!

What did you get up to last weekend? Have you got any mini or big adventures planned soon? Let me know in the comments?

Also, would you have bought that bunny? Let me know. 😉

Until next time, take care and I hope everyone’s week has been going well.