Other Restaurants

I missed the opportunity to blog about two restaurants from last week, and I don't want them to go without recognition. 

On Wednesday night, I went to Olive Mountain with my friends Betty, Molly and Irene. It's located in downtown Evanston on Davis Street. It has excellent Middle Eastern food. 

We started with a plate of hummus for the table. We dipped warm pita bread into it. 

I ordered the Mojaddara, which is brown lentils with rice and caramelized onions. It tasted good, but there weren't many lentils in it. The caramelized onions were great, though. I took half of the dish home and ate it for lunch the next day. The flavors really soaked in by then. 

Olive Mountain is not close to where I live, but I'd go there a lot if I lived in Evanston. It had great food, and our server was hysterical. 

We also walked over to Kafein on Chicago Street, which is a very funky coffee shop. I went there all the time when I was in high school, because I was in the stage of teenagehood (a word I just made up) where we all had drivers licenses but didn't think that there was anything to do in our suburbs. At the time, driving to Kafein for some vanilla Butterfinger shakes was very rebellious since it was so close to the city. 

I didn't order anything since I was stuffed, but I helped Molly finish her Big Ass Chocolate Chip Cookie that was fresh out of the microwave. Yum. 

The next night, I got sushi (for the third time in one week) with my brother and his girlfriend Emily. We went to Sushi Para in Paletine, which is an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant. 

You pay $18, and you can order as much food as you want. This includes miso soup, dumplings, chicken sate, sashimi and all of the scrumptious sushi rolls that you want. You can fill out a sheet more than once, but the catch is that you have to eat everything on your plate. They are allowed to charge you for the pieces that you don't eat. Honestly, there have been times when I have not been able to eat my last roll, and I put it in a napkin in my purse. 

I love their miso soup, so I always get a bowl there. There is plenty of seaweed and tofu in there. 

I also always get green tea. A lot of people order it there, and the ladies refill the cups the whole duration of the meal. 

This was my plate. I got a piece of tuna sushi, a spicy tuna roll, a Palatine roll and a crunch roll. I was lucky that Emily helped me out with some of my rolls (especially the Palatine roll since they are huge), because I was full after just a few bites. I really had to force my sushi down, but it all tasted so good. As usual, I had one piece left on my plate. 

By the way, I can't remember what was in all of the rolls. The spicy tuna was just tuna with some mayo, the crunch was similar to the latter but had some tempura flakes inside and the Palatine roll had cucumber, avocado, tobiko (little caviar balls) eel and I think tuna or salmon. 

I can never get enough of my sushi, can I?