Our final dinner in Napa. Kristine wanted to find something for the entire group that was reasonably nice and was going to be palatable to the entire group, so she picked Morimoto Asia (not to be confused with Morimoto).
For drinks, I started with the flight of Morimoto sake which included a ginjo, and junmai, junmai daigingo, and a nigori. We both thought the sakes were meh.
Before coming here and looking at the menu, we had a lot of choices. We mistakenly thought that each person would choose an item from section, but since this was group dining, we were actually all being served every dish! The first course along included hot and sour soup, salad, chicken wonton, and sticky ribs. The ribs were my favorite by far. They were batter fried and coated in sweet sauce. Savory, sweet, crunchy…I ate way too many of these.
Second course was a dim sum sampler and peking duck. We really love a good dim sum (or go to’s are primarily Yank Sing and Dragon Beaux), but this was a bit sad looking. There was one siu mai (and mine was a bit deflated looking) and a shrimp har gow and then some sticky rice in a banana leaf.
On the other hand, I love peking duck, so I was going to like that dish. The hot block for additional grilling of the duck was nice. I’m mixed on using tortilla’s as the carrier instead of the buns. On one hand, it’s has less volume than buns, but it just feels a bit off using a tortilla (and that’s probably purely due to conditioned response on my part of having eaten peking duck otherwise so many dozens of times). I did use the tortilla the first round, but then just ate the duck directly otherwise.
At this point, I know I’ve eaten a lot already and we still had the “entrees” to come!! This included whole branzino, black pepper steak, spicy eggpplant, and green beans. For our group, they served 3 whole fishes. On the side with the two Asians (i.e. me and Lilly), we did manage to pretty much finish one fish, haha. Lilly event finished off the head…well done!
All the other dishes were fine, basically like so many other Chinese restaurants at which I’ve eaten through my life. I suppose I was expecting more from a Morimoto restaurant. I’m sure it’s tough when you’re serving a big group since this essentially becomes banquet food. We sure did get a lot of food, so can’t complain about that!
In any case, it was nice to have a final meal with the group of Kristine and her friends.
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