I was going to review my favorite restaurant in Austin (Daito), but felt like I should have a change of pace and write about a restaurant that isn’t Japanese. For Valentine’s day, I managed to make a reservation for morning Dim Sum at Wu Chow (although they open at 11 AM and by dim sum standards, that’s afternoon and when all the leftovers are served). My girlfriend has been in love with dim sum since our trip to Hong Kong and has been excited about Wu Chow opening.

We’ve all heard these phrases “never give up” “you never know until you try” “if at first you fail, try again until you succeed” But what if you are able to realize that your goal is either impossible or will take a very long time to succeed before you completely fail or even better, before you even try? Wouldn’t that lower your opportunity costs and sunk costs? I know the quotes above aren’t meant to be taken literally, but I do know some people who would never give up, or bash their head against a problem for a very long time until they solve it.

I have been doing research/planning for the past few months for my trip to Japan and Korea next spring. The plan is to fly from Austin and land in Tokyo travel across to Osaka by bullet train and stop at places in between, then fly to Jeju Island, then to Seoul and back to Austin. Booking round trip is easy, but whenever you plan to visit multiple cities and countries, finding the best price and the best way to spend your credit card reward points can get rather tedious.

I’m trying to avoid devoting a whole blog post to negativity but since I’ve been trying out new places to eat faster than I can blog. I think its much easier to just compile a list of places I didn’t like with a short one to two sentence description of my thoughts on it. I seem to get remarks a lot about my bluntness, so this will also be good practice for me to choose my wording carefully.

I have been moving into my new apartment over the past week, and the movers came today to move all of our big furniture ( Einstein Moving was AWESOME btw I highly recommend them ). I have also been eagerly anticipating the opening of Fukumoto, which is an Izakaya and sushi restaurant. I found out last week that it’s only a few blocks away from our new apartment. After the movers left, we took a break and headed over expecting a huge wait since it opened only yesterday.

I felt like I’ve been writing about food a lot recently, and was planning on taking a break by writing about either technical / personal development or traveling. But I’ve been so excited about Sa-Ten that I just could not wait to share this place with others. There isn’t any other word I would use to describe this place besides Amazing. This place was opened by Kome’s Kayo Asazu and East Side King’s Moto Utsunomiya.

Decided to meet my girlfriend and a few of her coworkers downtown at Peché for drinks and dinner. I was told that their cocktails are amazing, but expensive. I found out later that it wasn’t just the drinks even the food was expensive. The food was good but not amazing, and definitely not worth that price considering the portions are amazingly small. Good thing I had a late lunch that day.

I approach most of my cooking with a very engineer type of approach. Look up a recipe, follow directions and use the exact amount listed on the recipe and use a timer and scale when necessary. This following recipe is one of the few recipes that I learned by watching others and doesn’t follow a particular formula and/or recipe (the others being mapo tofu and garlic mashed potatoes). I learned this recipe from my mom as a kid watching her cook.

On to my first restaurant review on this blog. I think I’d like to set up a general guideline on writing my reviews. A brief introduction, followed by a list of Pros and Cons, and a closing thoughts. I love Japanese food and Japanese cuisine in general, and that is no secret to my friends and family. Since moving to Austin my girlfriend and everybody I have spoken to has told me that Uchi has the best Sushi in Austin, if you’re willing to pay for it.

This post contains my personal opinion from my relatively short experience so far in the working world. I have no experience with project management or leading any teams. What is agile to you? 🔗I was motivated to write this due to a recent conversation I had during a job interview. I asked the interviewer what the team structure was like and how did their team’s workflow and Software Development Lifecycle work.