Sunday morning we slept in soundly. It was really nice to just lay around drifting between sleep and being awake. Kuniko got organized and hit the road first, because she had a lunch to go to as part of her work. Before she left we squeezed in a phone call to party central California – my dad was having his 60th birthday party, and they were getting ready for a big rush of party-goers. I can’t wait to hear how that party went.
I met Kuniko in Kobe after her lunch ended, and together we walked around town. The idea was to get a birthday present for Kuniko. Unfortunately Kuniko couldn’t find something she liked, so we caught a movie to kill some time before dinner. We saw “Dreamgirls” at the new theater in the Mint complex that they built a few months ago. The theater was really nice – kind of American style with really comfortable seats and a nice modern screen. The movie was OK, but not my favorite. There was plenty of music, and plenty of different styles to make it interesting.
After the movie we headed up the hill to House of Pacific for dinner. We arrived about 10 minutes early, so we sat in the lobby for just a little bit, and then the lady I organized the dinner with led us up to the bar where we had a glass of nice champagne to celebrate Kuniko’s early birthday. After a leisurely drink we let them know that we were ready to head to our table, and they sent a couple of people to guide us there. The service is always really good at House of Pacific, and it was a lot like being escorted by the Secret Service wherever we went.
The table was great – we could enjoy a beautiful view, and dinner was great, too. They had forgot about the wine, so I re-ordered a bottle, and they brought it up and served it up. We had lots of food for dinner – beef carpaccio with Parmesan cheese and aioli mustard, a grilled crab meat salad, blue cheese risotto, and the main course, roasted lamb ribs with bamboo shoots and garlic.
Dinner was a homerun, and I thought everything was going to work out perfectly, but as dessert arrived, the wheels kind of fell off the wagon.
They served up the dessert to Kuniko, a three course dessert of different chocolate desserts. They had written my previously delivered birthday message in English and kanji across the plate in chocolate, but unfortunately they used the wrong kanji for her name. Kuniko’s name uses an unusual kanji, and knowing this I had spelled it all out on Friday night by writing it on paper, but they still screwed it up. No biggie, but I was a little disappointed. Then, just as we finished dessert, the real coup d’ grace – a cockroach ran right across the white tablecloth.
Holy crap. It was a small cockroach, maybe a teenager, and it was moving too fast for us to catch it. I’m not a big fan of cockroaches, and Kuniko hates them. That was the kiss of death for House of Pacific. We won’t go there again, and it was a little sad. Not only did we have a shocker after dinner, but we’ll have to find a new favorite restaurant.
I paid the bill and we headed out of there as soon as we could. After the bill was safely paid I told our host about the cockroach, and she apologized, but it wasn’t quite the apology I was hoping for. Overall, I thought it was a real disaster.
We caught the train and headed home, and we were both really tired out from walking around Kobe all day. Eventually we got home and got to bed, but it was a little bit of a downer of an evening.
