After a whole day of drama —a roller coaster ride filled with mood swings, I was able to get my hand on the newly released silver GX1 at Samy’s Camera during their No Tax special promotion. As mentioned in the previous post, Samy’s computer system does not show any GX1 in stock at all. But in reality, they do have a few of them hiding in the back. It actually took the sales person 10 mins to look for it. While I was waiting for him to bring out my GX1, there were two more customers asking for the same GX1 but both were told there’re no stock. SPECIAL thanks to Benny & Emily who helped ask the sales person to put one on hold for me earlier in the afternoon.
I believe this would be a perfect camera for shooting photos and videos of little Aiden, the much faster AF and better ISO performance would definitely have the advantage over the aging GF2, although their dimensions are very similar. Most of the pictures below are taken by the GX1 without much tweaking needed to the settings. Anyhow, it was about dinner time after picking up the camera and tonight I’m meeting with Benny & Emily for dinner at n/naka before “they” pick up Janice from LAX.
n/naka is known for its interpretation of kaiseki dining; with only 3 different omakase menus to choose from, its not hard to pick which one we want because the third one is a vegetarian menu. 😛
It took me a while to look for the n/naka as there is no sign outside the restaurant.
Emily & Benny arrived just after me. They’re on a “mission” tonight. (GF2 @ ISO1600)
Full house tonight, we were lucky to secure a table by reserving just 2 days ahead.
n/naka is a small restaurant, with about only 20 seats available.
Huge wine cellar.
Starting below, all pics taken by GX1.
Every table has a plate of stones as decoration. (GX1 @ ISO1600 – the noise level has been greatly improved, thanks to its 16mp sensor with the same G3 processor.)
Straight-Out photo.
Mooncake/Mochi molding as wall decor.
I’m very impressed with the picture quality, even without tweaking camera’s settings or post processing.
Benny looks drunk even before dinner began. He also ordered the wine pairing for his 9 course Chef’s Tasting Omakase.
Baby Octopus with some kind of jello at the bottom.
The octopus was a little chewy, and we started wondering if this dinner is worth the price.
Did I mention he already acted as if he was drunk?
Dynamite – Sizzling hot, taste good.
Snow Crab w/mushroom. Good but missing the wow factor.
Quail Egg w/white Truffle. The white truffle is the highlight of the dish, especially for a truffle lover like me.
Snapper. I like the veggie more than the fish.
More sashimi with daikon. The quality was good. Daikon taste sweet too.
Uni with clear broth. At this point, the omakase dishes were getting more and more appealing. The uni was top notch quality, although I always prefer it served as sashimi.
Mixed Sashimi. The kumamoto oyster is the highlight, fresh and sweet.
Kani Koramushi – crab, black truffle, egg, and shiitake mushroom. Chef Niki likes to use truffle on her dishes and it always amazed us. The truffle aroma made us so “HYPER”. 🙂
Lobster, very fresh lobster with mayo sauce.
Pasta with Caviar, I didn’t try but they all said this was bad.
Uni risotto with white truffle. Another plate with white truffle and probably the best smelling plate of the night, the truffle aroma has sent us all to heaven. The very generous waiter shaved the truffle in front of us and we estimated it’d probably cost about $30~$40 for just the truffle alone. Yum yum.
Waiter just poured a glass of red wine, meat dishes coming up next.
Beef with sweet plum sauce.
Duck with sweet plum sauce. Ok, but I wasn’t too impressed.
Burning charcoal underneath, and someone was playing around and made a big mess. tsk tsk who else could that be.
Big eye tuna cubes with the Yakult taste like sake.
Now we are even happier because all the sushi are so good.
The toro is amazingly good. I haven’t had any good toro for a long time.
Good yellowtail too.
Who know this could be such a long dinner? It was already 9:15. Emily had taken off to LAX to pick up Janice and we did not finish until she came back. She missed out big time.
This uni sushi is definitely the BEST of the best. Look at its size, this is just one whole piece of Uni sitting on top of the sushi rice. Fresh, sweet, nom nom nom…..
Since we had an extra order, I took another piece of uni sushi and Benny got the sweet shrimp sushi.
Sweet shrimp was good too, very sweet. Chef Niki uses all top quality seafood for her sushi dishes and sent us all to heaven. 😀
At this point, our doubt was gone and both agree the quality is definitely worth the price.
Soba was good, very chewy; just the way I like it.
Miso Soup.
Last glass of wine, he looks so happy.
Dessert time, chocolate cookies to sum up our omakase experience.
Cheesecake.
By the time we finished dessert, it was about 10 pm. This was a 4 hours omakase course, but definitely worth the time and price. After a little more digging at n/naka website, it does mention – “a dinner for two may last up to three hours”. I hope to pay a visit to n/naka with Amy some time next year as its menu changes seasonally. Looking forward to my next experience, and until then, there will be a little bunny to take care of at home.