Casita Dinner

Valentine's Day in Japan is a little different.  When a holiday is not

Store display advertising White Day - no marshmallows here!

Japanese in origin, they tend to pick & choose the parts they like the best and that's how the celebrate.  So for Valentine's Day women give men chocolate - that's the extent of the holiday.  Finally, in 1978, the women realized how lopsided this was, and White Day was created, to be celebrated on March 14.  On White Day men are supposed to return the earlier favor by giving gifts to women, but they're not limited to chocolate - cookies, jewelry, lingerie, and marshmallows (marshmallows??) are given as gifts.  Seriously, don't give me marshmallows, no matter how prettily they are wrapped.

We decide to go out for dinner, since there won't be a huge number of reservations like there are in the US (usually at home we take advantage of the fact that we can celebrate out at a restaurant any night we want, so for Valentine's Day we usually stay in and make a nice dinner - lobster tails on the grill is one of our favorites).  I discover a restaurant we ate at in 2011, Casita, is having a special multi-course meal for February.  When I make the reservations they ask for our names (and make sure to get the correct spellings) and if there is a special occasion.
 
As part of the meal we receive champagne when we arrive, and we're charmed to see they printed a label for us.  After our drink at the bar we are brought to our table, where we see our custom made napkins.  No wonder they wanted to make they had the correct spelling of our names!

I wonder if I can do this when guests come to visit...

The meal and service is very good.  I'm not a huge foie gras fan, but we have some that has been caramelized, and it's the best I've had.

Yummy caramelized fois gras

 


Steve was excited to see a Gaia wine on the wine list and we enjoy that with dinner (Gaia was the winery for the winemaker dinner we attended on Thanksgiving).

Good to the last drop!

 

A little apple sorbet to clean our palate! 

I love when restaurants serve sorbet between courses.

Happy Valentine's Day!

For dessert, we're brought out to their balcony.  This is what we remember so well from 2011 - they did the same thing then, but it was cold, so we had electric blankets available so we could sit outside.  We took the idea home so we could be on our own balcony in the wintertime.  We didn't need the blankets this night though - it was unseasonably warm.     

It's hard to see in the photo, but we have a tart and some fruit, along with a sparkler decorating our plate.  I'm detecting a pattern - fire keeps occurring around me at meal times...

The remains of the dessert plate