Downtown San Antonio

Continuing my adventures in San Antonio...

On Dec 26th we slept in late, went to see Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol at a local Texan theater. I believe it was part of this regional chain - Santikos Theatres - and it was interesting not only in its being decked out in stereotypical Texas western decorations, but also in that it had assigned seating in each theater! I haven't come across that since Japan. I'm not sure how well it would work elsewhere in the US, but this theater was well staffed and had plenty of ushers to direct people to their seats and there were no issues. We picked out good seats on a kiosk ahead of time.

While waiting my mom shoved my brother and I into one of those photo booths and insisted we take photos. Here are some of the results:

Alfie looks thrilled, as always.

After the movie we had a late dinner at the Iron Cactus on the Riverwalk in downtown San Antonio. For a touristy "Mexican Grill" complete with live music it was actually pretty good. I had shrimp tacos and lots and lots of chips and salsa. I think my mom and brother had variations of an enchilada or two.
Yum. They were fairly generous with the shrimp.

Dessert was their version of tres leches as well as some delicious flan.


Finally, we just walked around the Riverwalk since all the X-mas lights were still up, and it was a pretty serene place to walk after dinner, once most of the rest of the tourists had left (or were only in the parts with bars).


I would have liked to stay longer, but Alfie is still underage, my mom doesn't live that close to downtown, and were were all pretty tired. Just as I am getting tired now. The San Antonio holiday trip conclusion will come next entry. Good night all.

Benihana for New Year's

No long excuses for my lack of posting tonight - I'm too tired. Hopefully I'll be better at keeping this New Year's resolution of doing a better job of maintaining my blog however, and then the explanations and ruminations on why I haven't posted in whatever lengthy period of time will no longer be necessary.

So, let's begin with New Year's. For New Year's Eve, Matt and I went to San Francisco and ate at the Benihana in Japantown. I've been a couple of times before for birthdays, but for New Year's Eve they had some different specials. I had filet mignon which was served with soup, salad, shrimp, vegetables and fried rice. Matt had a main dish of shrimp and steak with everything else I additionally listed plus ice cream. The chef was pretty entertaining, but since I've seen the show before (and it's always pretty much the same) I was more interested in the food, and the filet mignon did not disappoint. None of the teppanyaki places I know of around here are cheap, but Benihana was founded first (in NYC apparently) and has always been an enjoyable polished experience for special occasions, particularly birthdays, but it's seemingly pretty popular for New Year's as well.

Here is the chef cooking for our table. We didn't make any reservations, and just happened to walk in at the perfect moment for a table that needed two more people to be full. The next seats wouldn't have been available for probably another 30-40 minutes.


Here is my fried rice and filet mignon with liberal amounts of onions. No one else wanted the extra onions, so Matt and I wound up with the rest of them.

edit 1/16/12 - Oh yeah, and we took purikura as well, which I am now adding to this post now that I have it scanned



Since we were driving back to San Jose afterward, we didn't have anything to drink. I realize it was only Matt driving, but since he wasn't going to drink, I decided to wait as well. Once back at the apartment, we had *ahem* "California sparkling wine" (aka champagne that can't be referred to as champagne) and liqueur cherries from Trader Joe's. Delicious. After researching movies that took place on New Year's Eve, we settled on this :


Each of the Four Rooms mentioned was a separate story taking place in the same hotel and sometimes sharing characters, but told by a completely different director. Both Matt and I felt the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino stories were stronger than the other two, but that may have just been because I was immediately able to tell which two were theirs. While they were both still young directors when this movie was made and each piece is pretty short, their now famous trademarks are almost all there. And they were both satisfyingly ridiculous.

Finally we watched the New Year's ball drop at Time's Square on TV, then eventually after that we went to bed. And today? Not much either. I slept in late and read stuff. Pretty quiet, which was fine with me after the craziness that was Christmas. Maybe tomorrow I'll blog about that.