This morning we headed out to the Suburbs to see "Dora The Explorer LIVE" out in Rosemont. The Rosemont Theater seems to be the main place for the kiddy-crowd stage shows, and we've trooped out ther for various ones over the years. This time it was Dora (a fave of #2's), and the show was OK, for what it is. We took a cab down to the State of Illinois building to catch the Blue Line out to Rosemont, and then walked to the theater (which is about six blocks from the El). This is something of a compromise between me and The Wife. I really HATE to take cabs when they are not absolutely necessary and she really hates taking public trasport, so instead of us taking a bus downtown and just transferring to the El, we did the cab back and forth from downtown. Frankly, it's only pissing money away (in this case $12) as far as I'm concerned ... plus my knees prefer the bus/el to having to fold into a cab!
Anyway ... tonight we went to that new sushi place that I mentioned a few posts back. RA Sushi has just been open 3 weeks now, and is thier 7th location (5 in the Phoenix area, 1 in San Diego, and their next is going to be Las Vegas). We had the 4-year-old with us (the 8-year-old is off on a sleep-over), and ended up ordering WAY too much stuff to have things that she wanted to eat. We had a tempura appetizer, a big bowl of Udon noodles (I'm going to go back to just have that!) with veggies, tofu, and wonderful slightly-sweet broth, and an order of Pork Gyoza (originally ordered for Daughter #2, but she said "it was too spicy", so we ate it), we also had them make up a roll of Carrot Maki for her, along with a bowl of steamed rice. The Wife and I then had a big order of various Maki. If I was disappointed in anything, it was that their Maki menu did not include "traditional" veggie things like Oshinko or pickled gourd ... aside for a big vegetable roll the only veggie thing they had was cucumber. The best was their salmon skin roll ... yum!
It's interesting how small the restuarant space is there. We're very familiar with the space, having eaten at various previous tenants in that location over the past 30 years, and what had been a rather expansive space is now quite intimate. The Wife points out that the sushi bar takes up about 1/4 of the old dining area and the bar area another 1/4, so the space remaining is going to be smaller, plus they've put in bathrooms on the main level (you used to have to go down a steep narrow stairway to the basement), which takes up some more space. I'm guessing they have 10 4-tops, plus 5 2-tops, and maybe 10 seats at the sushi bar. Anyway, with the one caveat of the Maki selection, we loved everything ... the atmosphere is loud rock (heard some Ozzy, heard some Zep, heard some stuff I didn't recognize) and deep red walls, so all it really needs is a Process symbol up or maybe a portrait of Dr. LaVey! They're doing various Bento boxes for lunch ... so I'll have to check that out.
