Tetsuya's

For Katie’s birthday, Jared took her out to a really nice Japanese restaurant that she wanted to go to…Tetsuya’s. And this is not just any restaurant, it is rated one of the best restaurants in the world. We had to make a booking nearly nine months ago and could still only get in on a weekday. As you can guess when a place has that kind of waiting list, they can charge just about whatever they want. Thus, Jared believes that he has Katie's birthday covered until she's 30.

We had a beautiful table which overlooked a courtyard filled with Japanese gardens and waterfalls. 3.5 hours later we had eaten 15 courses and 15 drinks to match. The view was amazing, service was impeccable, and the food was delicious. Although it is hard to remember all of our courses, in basic terms we had:

Entrees (ie. appetizers)
1 Chestnut Mushroom Soup
2 Ocean Trout
3 Leek and Crab Custard
4 Seared Tasmanian Tuna with Apple
5 Marinated Prawn (shrimp for us Americans)
6 Baby Barramundi (classic Australian fish)
7 Spanner crab and avacado

Mains
8 Roast Duck
9 Black Angus Filet
10 Wagu Beef Strips

Deserts
11 Carmel, Peanut & Mascarpone
12 Beetroot Sorbet (surprisingly good!) & Chai Tea
13 Strawberry Shortcake
14 Delicious Homemade Cookie
15 Assorted Chocolates

The strawberry shortcake easily made Jared’s favourite while Katie’s was the leek and crab custard but it was hard to pick just one.

We got the matching drinks which were tailored to our different courses; white wine for the seafood appetisers, red wine for the red meat mains, and dessert wine for dessert. That was 15 glasses of wine and the best was that the first course didn’t come with wine at all…it came with a glass of sake! The sake was good sake but none the less it was still sake.

We were not actually meant to have 15 courses and the 10th course was complimentary as they gave us the same wine twice for one of the courses. Therefore they made an extra course so we could get back on track with the wine. The night ended at 1130 with Jared paying the bill and the waiter rolling us out to a waiting cab to take us home…literally!