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Vani and I have had a guest in town this week so we’ve been hitting some new and old favorite restaurants. Our friend lived here for most of their life so, much like me in Buffalo, returning home is an opportunity to stuff oneself full of favorites. Our Asian district is huge and full of great Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean cuisine. Dumplings, ramen, yakitori, and rice dogs all must be consumed while on vacation.

We also hit up one of the newer bars in the area, Mothership. It’s a space themed Tiki bar that really nails the aesthetic and theme, both in terms of decor and menu design. It’s a vegan place, but it isn’t particularly in your face about it and most people probably never notice. This leads to some interesting ingredient substitutions in the drinks that, in some cases, work out even better. My favorite example is the use of cultured cashew butter in place of some cream based ingredients. It adds a unique richness that’s not present in the original. The food was fantastic. We had roti with dip, a scallion pancake/okonomiyaki fusion sort of thing, and kimchi fried rice. Staff was friendly, but the place was busy and they were strict on the hour and a half time limit. That said, it’s plenty of time to get two drinks and some snacks while relaxing. The bar in-house produces their own lounge music, which is a spacey take on the general chill ambiance of most Tiki bars. I find that cool, but even cooler is they press it as vinyl volumes for purchase. I have all three and while it isn’t something I listen to often it comes in handy on nights where I want to lazily read and not pay too much attention to what’s on my speakers.

Other than eating and hanging out with our friend I’ve mostly been playing the new Tokyo Xtreme Racer. Even in Early Access there’s a good 20 hours of story mode to play and tons of Rivals to race. It’s awesome that a game like this can be made today and have an overwhelmingly positive response. It feels like the perfect modern Dreamcast/PS2 game and that makes sense since the developer, Genki, had most of their experience in that era. Worth it for racing game fans and I think it deserves a look even from those not normally interested in the genre.

-Ian