Okinawa Japanese

Last night Zach and I went out to celebrate my end of an era with a special mid week date night {I’m so lucky}.

We started our evening at WestEnd for a happy hour drink

Zach and I have been to West End many times are always love it.  They’ve got great drinks, great food, and an awesome outdoor area to lounge and enjoy an evening.  The only weird thing I will say about their outdoor patio, and maybe this is just me, but they do allow smoking in one section, so it is kind of smokey.

Were I enjoyed my first Moscow Mule.  I gotta say I love ginger so this isn’t too surprising, but YUM.   The bartender was a little heavy handed {he said he forgets to count to four} and even used gluten free vodka for me!  WIN.

Once our appetites were wetted, we headed to the main event of the evening: Okinawa Japenese also in the Tennyson neighborhood.

Okinawa

We walked in and were immediately taken to our seats.  Within a few minutes, a waitress came to let us know that their happy hour special was two for one wine, beer and sake.  SCORE

Obviously Zach was excited about the news!

We wanted to enjoy the evening (and now knew we both had two drinks to enjoy) so we staged our dinner.

Our first two rolls were a philly and a mango roll.  Both light and fresh, even though the shrimp was fried (not gluten friendly, I know).

Our second rolls were a sweet potato and a fourth roll that I can’t remember but was spicy and delicious!

By the end of the evening, and my third drink, I was feeling a little foggy but VERY happy.  We walked out from dinner to rain and had a good walk ahead of us, but I didn’t mind.

Somewhere between dinner and the walk home, I decided I needed Dairy Queen.  Not my best decision.  Let’s just say I woke up at around 1230 and did not get back to bed until after 4.  No more crappy food for this girl.

This Morning

Thankfully, I was able to sleep in, and around 830 got up and slowly enjoyed some coffee.   I knew my body needed to chill today but could also use some serious detox after the booze and ice cream, so I hit a 930 Hot Power Fusion yoga class at Core Power.

Just what the doctor ordered.  And now I am dominating a SoBe water and getting ready to make a huge brunch.  I think eggs are on the menu today…

What’s your cure when you have too much fun these days?

Where Everyone Knows Your Name

Another week almost done everyone!

Bloggie high five for ya!

I don’t know about you — but this week seemed to have absolutely flown by for this girl.  The first half of the week was pretty booked, so before I know it we were over the hump and onward to Friday.  Just how I like it.

Yesterday/Last Night

Yesterday was my rest day so after a nice walk with Gus and a day at work

Zach surprised me by suggesting that we go to Stella’s, our favorite little Italian spot near us.   Hello, Stella’s never fails, so you know I said HECK YES before he even finished asking.

Unfortunately, the only picture I got of the evening were the amazing zucchini fries that we start with every.single.time.

Seriously, they’re amazing.  Zach suggested we skip the appetizer and go straight to our entrees, but I respectfully QUICKLY squashed that idea.  He thanked me later.

So while I apologize for the lack of pictures, I will share recycled ones as we go their often 🙂

Me with my salad and their OUT OF THIS WORLD chicken.

Zach with the gnocchi and their awesome bread (he got risotto last night and loved it though).

and more foodie pictures.  I actually went with a different salad last night, but stuck with the chicken and same dressing.  It’s just THAT good.

Needless to say we were happy little campers when we got home.  I had a couple mini (well not so mini) cookies from Whole Foods before crashing HARD.  Red wine and good food will always do that to me 🙂

This Morning

I had it in my mind that I was going to tackle a tough work out today, and that’s exactly what I did this morning.  I actually came upstairs afterwords, drank a ton of water, and then just laid down on the ground for awhile.   I was spent, in the best possible way.

Workout of the Day: SPEED WORK

• 5 minute easy warm up (6.2 pace)
• 1 minute @ 8 mph
• 1 minute @ 9 mph
• 1 minute @ 4 mph
• repeat 10 *
• 5 minute cool down of incline walking
• 25 bicep curls with 12 lb weights
• 25 incline sit ups

Oh yeah. . . I was cashed.  And now I am looking Oh.So.Forward to my butterscotch pudding that I have waiting for me in the work fridge.  All the little things 🙂

Question of the Morning:  Where do you go that everyone knows your name?  A restaurant?  Bar? Whole Foods? Home Depot? Share! 🙂

Being Nice Pays Off

Happy Sunday everyone 🙂  Who has had an awesome weekend?  What’d you do?

Welp, this morning started off with a little bit of a late start (thank you time change), a good run, and I’m about to head out the door to a blogger meet up.  Fun!

But before I get to that . . . let’s back track to last night and the real point of this post 🙂

Being Nice Pays Off

Last night was our originally planned anniversary dinner.

 

Promise you, this is our last anniversary celebration 🙂  This dinner was SUPPOSED to be last Wednesday, but Zach thought he was traveling so we postponed the reservation.  And then he ended up not traveling so we did lots of celebration in between :).  I hope you all don’t mind :).

We started off the evening at a new-to-us bar in the neighborhood, Churchhill’s Public House.  We were only there for a drink (4 dollar Malbec for this girl, hello!), but we definitely enjoyed ourselves.  There were tons of TV’s showing all different kinds of sports, all different kinds of games and seating area options.  I could easily see us going back there for sporting events in the future. . .

The highlight of the evening was a date to one of our FAVORITE local spots, Duo.  We made 730 reservations and were sure to show up early (closer to 715 than 730) to get our table.

We were warned that our table wasn’t ready yet, since we were early. . . but that it shouldnt’ be a problem to be seated by 730.  So we went to the bar to order a drink to enjoy with dinner.

Welp, 730 came and passed with no table.  Thankfully, the hostess came up to us and let us know that the people in our table were eating their dessert and that it shouldn’t be long. . .

By 745, I started to get a little annoyed, but stayed quiet.  This is when the bartender ALSO apologized, and let us know they were still eating their dessert, but that the kitchen was going to be sending us out a snack.

 

Sorry for the poor lighting, but that is salmon in an amazing fresh and spicy puree of some sort.  It was tiny, but helped to make us feel a little better about the situation.  Pays to be nice 🙂

And then 8 PM rolled around and we still weren’t seated.  Whomp whomp.  By about 805-810 we were finally taken to our table with TONS of apologies.

 

Now don’t get me wrong, I totally get that restaurants get busy and patrons stay longer than anticipated. . . but almost 40 minutes was a little frustrating.  Oh well . . . we knew the meal would be good.

 

Like every meal at Duo, we started with marinated olives and flat bread, that didn’t dissapoint :).

 

And split a mushroom tart appetizer that was tiny but PACKED with flavor.

 

But my entree stole the show.  Grilled chicken in a jalepeno cheddar polenta with jelly on the top.  AMAAZING. I literally couldn’t stop eating it, so good.

Zach got a braised beef dish and we both polished the meals together without problem.

The real nice surprise was when we got the check — not only was our snack free (which we anticipated) our first round of drinks were free.  I promise you we didn’t mention that it was our anniversary this time, they just felt bad for the wait.

And let me tell you — that is one way to totally make the wait seem OK.  Everyone in the restaurant was apologetic, they gave us a snack, and comped us drinks.  I’ll wait 30 minutes for that 🙂

And that my friends, is why it pays to be nice 🙂

 

And of course, we capped off the evening with Little Man ice cream — AMAZING.  The place was packed at almost 10 o’clock, but TOTALLY worth it.  Best dessert ever.  Love this warmer weather Denver is having 🙂

Question of the Morning:  Have you had a situation like this before when you made reservations?  Were you nice 😉