Shochu!

Last night, before heading over to a show at the Museum of Natural History, we headed over to Hells Kitchen for some drinks and eats.

While waiting for our table to be ready at Yakitori Totto, we grabbed a beer at Valhalla. Holy cats is this place loud! Thank god our table was ready when it was. I was starting to lose my mind. That place has good beers on tap, but the echo chamber effect they have going on is insane.

I was salivating in anticipation on the way over to Yakitori Totto. Word on the street was that this is the real deal- mostly Japanese clientele, dynamite skewers, and pretty much unknown to the masses.

What I didn't know was the power of the almighty Shochu. Shochu, for the uninitiated, is a distilled spirit made from grain or potato, a more potent and dryer/cleaner tasting cousin of sake.

We each ordered a shochu with grapefruit while looking over the menu. What arrived was a large tumber of ice filled almost to the top with shochu, with a half grapefruit and juicer served on the side. Incredible. We juiced our grapefruits and topped off the tumbler of shochu. Sweet nine ounce baby Jesus, was this good.... More on the power of shochu later.

Dinner lived up to the hype. We ate almost every skewer on the menu (as well as a surprising good salad to balance things out). Not a single clunker in the bunch. We will definitely be coming back.

So after another shochu and some nice conversation with the people next to us we took off for the show. It wasn't long before I realized how powerful thise drinks really were. First I lost my bank card in the ATM. Then I cut myself off for the rest of the night. It was just as well given where we were headed....