Gaijin Noodle & Sake House @ Gaslamp District, San Diego

It's a drag being of Japanese descent sometimes, meaning that when you know a culture to a fault, it's a pain in the ass to go out and eat Japanese  that's popular everywhere, but is also pretty crappy...

But every so often, we throw caution to the wind, keep our minds open to new experiences and start from square one.  There was buzz about a relatively new Japanese venue in San Diego called Gaijin Noodle and Sake House in the Gaslamp District and so we checked it out!!

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Well, even from the street, you could tell that this place was vibrant and lively!  With a definite lounge twist to it, the interior was terribly hip and awesomely cool......probably a great late night atmosphere.

It's got a lot of accolades; 2012 best Asian Fusion restaurant- and there's a lot on the menu: from Yakitori to Noodles as well as an extensive Sake list-they even bring out complimentary Sake and ring a Gong for the whole dining room to take a shot...

A complimentary Cabbage salad app came out, with it we ordered some Japanese pickles to open up the palate...  It's a good way to get some veggies in and it stirs the appetite up to receive the more heavier items...



For our savory Apps, we had the Carnitas Bao Bao, a twist on a Mexican Classic and a Pork Belly Bao Bao.  Both were delicious and had great flavors going on.  We could have spent the whole night eating multiples of these delicious Asian treats!!!

  

For the main event, we ordered 'The Seven Samurai' an assortment of Yakitori Skewers that had peaked our interest:  Natural Beef Skirt Steak, Jidori Free Range Chicken,DUroc Pork Kimchi, Eggplant, Mexican White Shrimp, Quail Eggs and Bacon and Portobello Mushroom. All were really tasty and very well done...

The only disappointment of the night had to be the Gaijin Drunken Noodles: a mixture of fresh cut Vegetables in a soy based sauce.  The dish was entirely over salted, even for sodium craving vampires such as ourselves; we had a hard time finishing this dish.  Which was a shame, cuz it's usually the last dish that's your lasting impression of the meal...

But fear not, as ever-ravenous, self-proclaimed gourmands that we are, we have gluttonously trained ourselves to evaluate the meal in it's entirety, which overall was a favorable one...  This place will definitely have a great after hours crowd, with the volume of dishes that caters to the imbibed.

 It pays to try the new and noteworthy, there's something to be said about being the Best of the City, and Gajin has that going for it!!!




Ratings (Out of Five Stars)
Food:                       3
Ambience:               4
Service:                   3