Blur-blur Sunday

I wanted to spend some quality time with My Favorite Cousin, and it's been months since I last visited my furry nephew, so Sankala and I went to hang out with them while I also played delivery boy.  Since someone insisted that her wine fridge had absolutely no more space, we thought it was only right that we help free up some room...

2016 Cantenac Brown - very minty, ripe and a little jammy, with sous bois and forest pine. Definitely still pretty tannic.

2015 d'Armailhac - a little alcoholic, not so ripe and sweet.

Dinner time rolled around, and to my surprise My Favorite Cousin wanted to go grab some food. It's Sunday night and we have no reservation. Where could we possibly find our dinner?

Well, after a brief detour - during which my beloved called and made a booking at restaurant B while we made our way to restaurant A, only to find the latter closed on a Sunday night as one would expect - we eventually arrived at Yardbird. Surprised they weren't that busy but happy to get ourselves seated without any problems.

Sweet corn tempura, sea salt, pepper - can't come here without getting some of this. Actually, I think I need to have one order of this - both spheres - for myself. The sweetness of the corn was satisfying as always, but for some reason the liberal addition of shichimi (七味) always makes it that much better.

(chicken) wings, sea salt, shichimi - always enjoyable, and the kitchen made sure there's plenty of shichimi on top.

KFC, yuzu, chili, lime - this really is one of the best dishes here... maybe just behind the corn. Love the spicy kick and the sweet, stick sauce lathered all over the cauliflower.

Scotch egg, cabbage, Bull-Dog, Kewpie - pretty good. Someone really loved all that shredded cabbage.

(chicken) meatball, tare, egg yolk - my favorite yakitori (焼鳥) item is always tsukune (つくね), and I'm usually really happy with this. Tonight, though, this seemed somewhat over-seasoned.

Smoked fish fried rice, nama nori, egg white - I thought this would be interesting, but initially there was a gap with my expectations. My first few mouthfuls I found this bland and boring, but as I ate more of this, my opinion changed. The smokiness of the fish came through, and we also had crunch delivered by both the finely diced preserved radish as well as the shredded pea pods.

Yuba gyoza, Lao Gan Ma ponzu - kinda interesting. Instead of wrappers made of dough, we had yuba (湯葉) that was thinner and crispier. The dipping sauce was a little too strong for me.

We continued to drain someone's wine fridge by BYO-ing at dinner.

Krug Grande Cuvée, 168ème édition, ID 319031 - lemon and toasty nose. Higher acidity on the palate than expected.

Not bad for a Sunday, but kinda killed my plans for a light dinner...