A bit of a change of pace. Thought I’d give a review on the Fusion-Japanese restaurant Kobe Jones in Docklands, Victoria, Australia.

Last night Kaoru and I went to this restaurant - we’d been meaning to try it out for a while.

The restaurant looks very nice, and is quite comfortable - though tables feel a little large. We sat down and a waiter asked if we’d like a drink. To start, we ordered a cocktail (for Kaoru) and a mocktail (for me). Kaoru ordered a Japanese mint cocktail (not sure of the drinks name), while I ordered some fruity mocktail thing.

The cocktails took a very long time to arrive, but we didn’t mind. We figured it was a slow restaurant, and we’d sit back and take it easy. Kaoru planned to have a glass or two of wine along the way. I thought I’d have a nice dessert at the end of a long night.

Anyway, the cocktails arrived. Of course, mine looked like a girl’s drink, so the waiter tried to give the drink to Kaoru. Some restaurants might make an effort to ensure drinks go to the right people, but anyway, the night moved on.

Kaoru’s drink had promised the Shiso mint leaves from Japan. When it arrived, Kaoru noted it only contained Australian mint leaves - no shiso leaves to be seen. Maybe they figure stupid Australian customers wouldn’t know the difference? Thinking back, this should have been a warning sign.

Soon, a waitress came over to take our order. After fumbling with her pad for quite some time, she finally was ready. I asked if they could do any of their “signature dishes” without onions or garlic (given I’m allergic to them) and she went and asked another waiter who came to our table instead to take the order. He wasn’t sure either, and went to the kitchen to talk to the chefs. When he returned he pointed out a couple of things that didn’t have onions or garlic, but there was no indication that the chef would make me anything special. Oh well - some restaurants have gone out of their way to make me special order meals, but not all are quite at that standard I guess.

So I ordered fairly standard Japanese fare - some sushi rolls, some tempura, some agedashi tofu, and to start with, asked for some edamame. Edamame is a common appetiser in Japanese restaurants and pub meals. Kaoru ordered a number of dishes from their “signature dishes” menu - after all, she wanted to taste some of the things Kobe Jones are famous for.

Within about 5 minutes, one of the signature dishes arrived. Kaoru noted it was strange that the Edamame wasn’t here yet, but that arrived a few seconds later. That was ok - so we started to eat, when suddenly every other dish arrived too. It was as if we’d ordered fast food. Clearly these meals were prepared earlier.

Kaoru was not impressed, and decided since she was still drinking her cocktail she wouldn’t even bother with wine. So we began to eat.

The first signature dish she tried consisted of seafood extender. A signature dish said to be made of crab. We’re talking a “signature dish” here - you’re expected to use special ingredients, not some cheap minced fish. Seafood extender. Yes. Seafood extender.

Other “signature” dishes were nothing special. As for my more standard Japanese dishes, they were also nothing special. Though why you’d put some salad on the side of tempura I don’t know. That’s not fusion - that’s just a lazy chef trying to pretend they are doing fusion.

We decided to have dessert somewhere else, and asked the waitress for our bill. When it was presented I gave her my VISA card. We watched as she tried to palm the card off to someone else to sort out - first a waiter taking dirty dishes back to the kitchen, then another waiter serving drinks. Eventually she found someone to take it, and the bill was returned to me for signing. The waiter who brought the bill to the table with my VISA actually stood over me as I signed the docket, and said something along the lines of “So, how was the food without garlic? You know, it really needs some garlic in food to taste good”. It’s an allergy mate - so yes, I really need to know that without garlic my food is going to taste like crap. With garlic I’m apparently going to enjoy it as I slowly die at the table.

He continued to watch me as I hovered over the “tips” part of the bill. So I put a fat zero there and signed it.

There were no farewells from staff as we left. We just got up and headed to the door. As I got to the door a family were entering. The father of the family saw me leaving and asked “Is the food here any good?”. I replied “Hmmm…it’s….ok…”. He laughed, made motions of looking at the menu, and then went somewhere else. I suspect I did his family a favour.

Don’t worry - I won’t make a habit out of doing restaurant reviews. It’s a slow news week. Leopard isn’t out until Friday, so I’m saving up on the OS X bitching until then. :-)

This is Kaoru, Jamie’s wife. I thought I’d take the opportunity to write an article on Curmi the Blog, to break up the monotony of Jamie’s nerdy ramblings. This is my first article, so I hope you find it both interesting and thought provoking.

Kaoru

Do you know how long it takes paper to decompose in a landfill? Do you know how long it takes cans, bottles & polystyrene to decompose?

The goal of this article is to leave you with at least one piece of new information about sustainable living. I am not an expert but did a bit of research, so hopefully you will have an “Oh, I didn’t know that!” moment.

Things I would like to talk about are recycling, buying electricity and eating smarter for the environment.

To answer the earlier questions, it takes up to 1 year for paper to decompose, up to 100 years for steel cans, up to 500 years for aluminium cans, over 1,000 years for plastic bottles, and probably never for glass bottles and polystyrene.

Recycling

Things like paper, cans and bottles are our valuable resources and can be used again. For example, glass is 100% recyclable and can be reused again and again. If we throw them out as general rubbish, they will be sent to a landfill and simply stay there being useless forever. What a waste!!

Making new goods out of recycled material saves energy. For example, making new aluminium cans from recycled cans uses 20 times less energy than making cans from raw materials. It makes so much sense to recycle doesn’t it?

Recycling also reduces the need to chop down trees or mine new raw materials, which often damages the surrounding eco-system.

So I strongly recommend recycling because it saves our valuable resources, saves energy and protects our environment.

Electricity

Do you know how you could dramatically cut your greenhouse pollution at home? It’s to purchase what they call “accredited Green Power”.

In Victoria, over 90% of electricity generated comes from burning coal. It’s the most greenhouse intensive method of electricity generation.

Reducing electricity consumption does reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, the most effective way is to buy electricity generated from renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, water and organic materials.

With accredited Green Power, you are guaranteed that your electricity supplier will buy the equivalent amount of nominated electricity from renewable sources. For example, you may consider purchasing 50% of your electricity from renewable sources. You will pay a little more for Green Power but it will result in a direct contribution to the construction of ‘additional’ renewable energy generators for our future.

Eating Smarter

Do you know what you choose to eat can also have an impact on the environment?

Production of animal products such as meat and dairy has a larger negative impact on the environment compared to plant products such as vegetables and beans.

Additional water and other resources are required to grow grain feed for the animals. The air and water is polluted by the animal waste. Much of the world’s deforestation is a result of clearing and burning to create more grazing land for livestock.

I am not suggesting that everyone becomes a vegetarian, but you may want to consider eating one less serving of animal product each week.

If you are buying seafood, a better choice would be fish caught from the wild, compared to fish grown in fish farms. Especially carnivorous fish such as prawns, salmon, snapper, barramundi and tuna can take up to 12kgs of fish meal caught from the wild to produce only 1kg of themselves. It makes so much sense to have 12kgs of caught fish ourselves, doesn’t it?

The more processed a product is, the more additional energy & resources required in the process and therefore more negative impact it has on the environment. The further a product has travelled to get to you, the more fuel has been burnt and therefore more negative impact it has on the environment.

So you might consider choosing fresh carrots over canned, and local cheese over imported.

You now know if you didn’t already about the benefits of recycling, Green Power and eating smart for the environment. The next step is up to you.

Kaoru

Apple’s getting some well deserved bad press at the moment for its attempts to block not only unlocking of the iPhone, but also the ability to add third party applications and non-iTunes-Music-Store-bought ringtones. I’ll have more on this in an article soon.

Today, a new video has surfaced regarding the iPhone. Really funny and well worth a look. Thanks once again to Elroy for the exclusive!