Authentic Japanese

So I obviously need to get better at blogging...jeez its been a while!

A couple Fridays ago Alan and I went to dinner with our fabulous friends Kristy and Ryan. We ate at this fantastic authentic Japanese Tapas Restaurant called Shoya Japanese. Ryan actually sold the space to the owner about 2 years ago and the restaurant is finally opened for business. Most of us enjoy Americanized Japanese...my goal was to try a few authentic dishes.

After we sat down and ordered drinks, which included a Japanese vodka mixed with freshly squeezed fruit - of course I didn't get the name, so I'll update at a later date, we ordered quite a few (regular) dishes. Now all these were absolutely delicious don't get me wrong; but authentic not so much. I asked the waitress what she recommended and she flat out told us..."you not like authentic food, its all raw, stay with cooked food." All right all right, maybe another time; I did try a sauteed squid dish and it wasn't bad, but I wouldn't order it again. Hey I was trying! As we were trying to decide on a few more dishes the owner appeared and told us we had to try 2 more that he highly recommended. Both are cooked, but I would never have thought to try either.
The first one was Okonomi - Yaki: a Japanese pancake with pork, egg, and vegetables; this was quite interesting it come out a large pancake with a sort of sweet eel sauce on top, it was about an inch and a half thick and sort of like stuffing in that the veggies and pork were chopped up in it but held together by the egg/dough mixture. Absolutely delicious but pretty rich. I definitely recommend trying this though.
The second was Yakisoba Noodle: pan fried egg noodle with pork and vegetable. Needless to say I hope everyone likes pork, because they serve a lot of it. The pork was sauteed with the noodles to perfection. I honestly have no idea what sort of ingredients go into this, but it was awesome. I would order this every time!

The best times include good food, good company, and a willingness to try whatever. This was a wonderful night out and hope it happens again soon!