Scott and I celebrated our 4 year (!!) anniversary at Minami this year. It was excellent. We sat at the sushi bar so we could watch the chefs prepare food. Very cool.

We started with tuna tartare with lotus root chips, and chicken and foie gras gyozas. The tartare looked and tasted beautiful and the consommé with the gyozas was superb.

The sushi roll was the Minami Roll, which comes wrapped in short rib. Definitely no soy sauce necessary, this roll had bags of flavour (heh, I think I have been watching too much Masterchef AUS).

We also split an aburi platter of a whole bunch of beautiful nigiri. Each one comes with a different sauce or garnish that compliments the fish very well. My favourite was the tuna nigiri because it melted in my mouth like avocado. Scott liked the mackerel one and the scallop one a lot as well.

And then because you don’t stop eating when you’re full (you stop when you hate yourself), we also got some of their special flame-seared aburi oshi sushi. We had half salmon and half mackerel which our chef torched right before our eyes. Super tasty. I loved the flavour of the mackerel.

Overall we were very pleased with our meal. We had been to Miku before, but I enjoyed myself more at Minami, I guess because the atmosphere is slightly more casual and because we got to sit at the sushi bar. A big thanks to Jessie for a helpful voucher and thanks to Scott for deciding to share it with me. :)

OH MAN, so much food. The latest Tasting Plates event was the most generous one yet. So much deliciousness.

The evening started at A.G.R.O. Roasters for registration and coffee but I didn’t take any pictures there because I don’t care for coffee. We basically just took the coffee samples and ran back to the car to get to the next restaurant anyway.

La Mezcaleria

My plan was to have a margarita at each restaurant, semi-serious. It started off well, I had margaritas at the first two restaurants, but then the rest of the places didn’t have them, so my crazy margarita crawl ended up being pretty responsible. Haha.

La Mezcaleria drinks are really really good. I love lime.

Red snapper ceviche, guacamole, and a chicken tinga tostada.

Everything was awesome. Very fresh and nicely put together. This plate of food was almost enough for a whole meal on its own! We started to realize we were in trouble.

The combination of the tasty food, the live band, and being able to watch the chefs cook made this our favourite stop of the whole evening. I’ve been there before and I definitely will be returning again.

El Azteca

Margarita #2. Half the price, but too sweet.

Ceviche, guacamole, and cochinita pibil.

This plate was fairly similar to what we had at La Mezcaleria. So much food! The ceviche wasn’t as nice (the strange sweet red sauce ruined it) but we thought the pork tostada was really good. And the chips were nice and extra crunchy.

Las Tortas

Cochinita pibil torta (sandwich), chips and salsa, and a churro.

The sandwich was pretty good, but I think we were already so full we didn’t enjoy it as much as we might have on an empty stomach. My sandwich was ULTRA spicy, but the rest of the group didn’t seem to be. My lips were tingling!! The salsas had great flavour. The churro was kind of dense and not great. I’m sure they would be better if they were prepared fresh.

Chicha

Quinoa salad with mango, cheese and chili croquette, calamari and chorizo skewer, basil mashed potatoes.

I had been wanting to try Chicha for a very long time. It’s right across the street from where I change buses on the way to work and I think their restaurant sign is very visually appealing, plus I knew they had great reviews on Urbanspoon. It did not disappoint, this was a great plate of food.

Chicha is a Peruvian restaurant so the flavours were different than everywhere we had been so far. The salad was refreshing, the croquette was indulgent, the skewer was intriguing, and the mashed potatoes were comforting.

Guanaco Food Truck

Horchata while waiting for our food. Sweet but not tooooo sweet.

Pork and chicken pupasas and fried cassava.

Cheesy corny goodness. These were nice but I was basically exploding at this point so I didn’t have that much.

Sal Y Limon

Last stop. Shrimp ceviche, and chicken tinga tostada.

The ceviche was actually not very nice. But the chicken tostada was pretty decent. Again, I was pretty much in a food coma so I just had a bit of each and gave the rest to Lauren.

Lauren basically thought it was the best night ever because he got to eat all his food plus all the food Rosemarie and I couldn’t finish, hahaha.

Their horchata was very sweet.

SERIOUS FOOD COMA. A great night of eating. It was the best Tasting Plates event yet, I think.