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A Guy's Moleskine Notebook

Thoughts and reflections on works of fiction and literature. Pondering of life through pictures and words. Babbling about gay rights. Travelogues and anecdotes.

  • [1] Annie Proulx: Brokeback Mountain
  • [2] Arthur Golden: Memoirs of a Geisha
  • [3] Yu Hua: To Live
  • [4] Alan Hollinghurst: The Line of Beauty
  • [5] Colm Toibin: The Master
  • [6] Carlos Ruiz Zafon: The Shadow of the Wind
  • [7] William James: The Varieties of Religious Experience
  • [8] Charles Higham: The Civilization of Angkor
  • [9] Graham Greene: A Burnt-Out Case
  • [10] Dai Sijie: Mr. Muo's Travelling Couch
  • [11] Alan Hollinghurst: The Swimming-Pool Library
  • [12] Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita
  • [13] Colm Toibin: The Blackwater Lightship
  • [14] Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star
  • [15] Ross King: Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling
  • [16] Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
  • [17] Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections
  • [18] Colm Toibin: The Story of the Night
  • [19] John Banville: Shroud
  • [20] Leo Tolstoy: Resurrection
  • [21] Peter Hessler: River Town, Two Years on the Yangtze
  • [22] Ian McEwan: The Atonement
  • [24] Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera
  • [25] Ignacio Padilla: Shadow without a Name
  • [26] Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
  • [27] Richard Russo: Straight Man
  • [28] Fyodor Dostoevsky: Notes from Underground
  • [29] Alan Hollinghurst: The Spell
  • [30] Hermann Broch: The Death of Virgil
  • [31] James Baldwin: Giovanni's Room
  • [32] Ken Kesey: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest
  • [33] Xingjian Gao: One Man's Bible
  • [34] C. Jay Cox: Latter Days
  • [35] Harper Lee: To Kill A Mockingbird
  • [36] William Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew
  • [37] Daniel A. Helminiak: What The Bible Really Says about Homosexuality
  • [38] James Baldwin: Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
  • [39] Kenji Yoshino: Covering - The Hidden Assault of Civil Rights
  • [40] Italo Calvino: If, On a Winter's Night A Traveler
  • [41] Arthur Phillips: The Egyptologist
  • [42] George Orwell: 1984
  • [43] Michael Warner: The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and Ethics of Queer Life
  • [44] Andrew Sullivan: Virtually Normal
  • [45] Henry James: The Wings of the Dove
  • [46] Jose Saramago: Blindness
  • [47] Umberto Eco: The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
  • [48] Dan Brown: Da Vinci Code
  • [49] Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
  • [50] Ken Follett: The Pillars of Earth
  • [51] Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
  • [52] Michael Thomas Ford: Alec Baldwin Doesn't Like Me
  • [53] Jonathan Franzen: How To Be Alone
  • [54] Jonathan Lethem: The Fortress of Solitude
  • [55] Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club
  • [56] Zadie Smith: White Teeth
  • [57] Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Double
  • [58] Jose Saramago: The Double
  • [59] Andrew Holleran: Dancer from the Dance
  • [60] Heinrich von Kleist: The Marquise of O & Other Stories
  • [61] Andrew Holleran: In September, the Light Changes
  • [62] Tom Perrotta: Little Children
  • December 13, 2006

     

    Barracuda

    When Bill sent me an invitation to dinner through OpenTable.com, I had no idea what or where Barracuda was. He wrote,

    "It's listed as Japanese, but there's a lot of fusion going on."

    True. The menu has alludes to a delightful mixture of shushi, sashimi (raw cuts of fish), nigiri )slice of raw fish over rice) and ceviche. The newest addition to the unique dining scene in the Castro, Barracuda (barracuda is a fish, but upon a little research I arrive in the conclusion that this Japanese-sounding word is not Japanese, kind of like hagen diaz) serves Japanese cuisine with Peruvian and Brazilian influence.

    With a funky and colorful interior, the upscale quasi bar ambience of Barracuda can be a deception if you take a peek from the outside. Candle-lit tables, creative and modern interior render the restaurant a very sublime ambience.

    Bill and I selected the high table with stools by the window, which one of the cute servers deemed as the warmest and most private table for conversation. Since Bill is not a sushi fanatic, he opted for a grilled fillet and being the connoisseur of sushi that I am, I order the Barracuda sushi set with 11 pieces of nigiri including shrimp, yellowtail, white tuna, tuna, salmon, fish eggs, and eel. Our server has suggested a starter of cerviche, which represents their assortment of experimental fushion dishes, but since we came for a Japanese dinner, we politely declined the offer.

    About half way through our dinner, over conversation about the past semester and our writing, a skein of their Christmas lights that was taped (a gay boy wouldn't have used Scotch tape?) on the wall above us collapsed to about an inch short of Bill's head. We joked about how that might forsee a possible lawsuit that will entitle us a lifetime of free sushi. Overall it was a pleasant dining experience at a stylish ambience. It's more of a hipster spot with mod decor but I can find better sushi elsewhere, maybe even for less. It's a fun place to be but don't expect serious authentic Japanese food especially if they serve this queer lollipop tempura thing!

    3 Comments:

    Blogger matty said...

    ...but, Matt, isn't that the new place right by one of your fave haunts on Market Street?!?!? Or, am I confused?

    12/13/2006 6:16 PM  
    Blogger mattviews said...

    It's actually right by *your* favorite haunt--a couple doors down from Sweet Inspiration, on 2251 Market. I think it's a bit pricy but if you like stylish ambience, hipster type of hang-out, that's the place to be. I mean, $8 for 4 pieces of unagi-ten (eel+shrimp tempura) roll---that's a bit too much, don't you think?

    12/14/2006 6:19 AM  
    Blogger matty said...

    I don't really do sushi. It tastes good, but I always want it to be hot or warm. Tho, the California Rolls or good. But, I don't know from pricing.

    Ah, Sweet Inspiration.

    12/18/2006 6:18 AM  

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