Excursion to Spider Sushi Bar Media

Two friends and I visited another restaurant in the area. This time it was a Japanese style restaurant with various foods like yakisoba, udon, bentos, and sushi.

For this site I will focus more on the media part of my excursion, you can see more about the restaurant in the link above.

Equipment:

• Pentax Optio WG-2 digicam
• Nikon D7000 with the Nikon 50mm f1.8g lens

I used the WG-2 for my video clips. The setting used was 1080p 30fps and with electronic SR on. As always, I need a lot more practice to make higher quality video captures. Simply put, move slow and brace your arms to avoid as much camera shake as possible.

When editing the videos, I extract the audio from the clips and edit them in Audacity to make the mono recording into stereo as well as attempt some basic noise reduction. 

For the photos, I used the Nikon D7000 in my U2 custom setting mode. This mode is set to aperture priority and -0.3 exposure compensation. I have automatic ISO selection on and set to 1/60th minimum shutter speed.

When shooting in the restaurant I have the camera set to “Q” mode in an attempt to limit the sound from the camera. One negative of the switch to Nikon was that I miss the quiet shutter and mirror slap of the Pentax K-7 and K-5, although the quiet mode on the Nikon does help a reasonable amount. 

Here's a copy of my companion article. 

CVFTA decided to visit another local restaurant.  This time we decided on Japanese cuisine in the form of a sushi bar that has pretty much everything from yakisoba and udon to nigiri sushi and bento boxes.

The restaurant itself is easy to access off two well known streets and has a nice atmosphere inside.  They have the bar where the chef does work as well as normal 4-person tables with chairs and 2-person tables with comfy padded seats.  They also have the space for larger numbers of guests.

Their website is located here: spidersushibar.com

Our mutual order consisted of:

Calamari Appetizer

Sauteed squid seasoned with our house ginger sauce.

Rock'n Roll Sushi Roll

 Eel, yellowtail, and cucumber

Chicken Yakisoba

Pan fried noodles with bell peppers and asparagus.

Sushi Dinner

8 pieces of sushi, 4 piece california roll, soup & salad.

Gindara Bento

Black cod marinated in miso, served with soup, salad, 4 piece California roll, orange, white fish, shumai, and steamed rice.

Prices are pretty reasonable, though portions are average in size.  This is mostly a sit-down restaurant, so expect to tip a waitress.  Overall, I liked the flavor of what I had ordered, which was the black cod bento.  The miso soup was tasty and a bit unique compared to ones I've had in the past. It had a slightly sweet flavor to it, which could have been from the large portion of what I assumed to be seaweed and pieces of sweet onion or chives.  The salad had a mild and slightly sweet dressing to it, which was nice and refreshing.  

The bento itself had a small piece of cod along with some vegetables and a few fried items.  The cod reminded me of my time in Nagasaki when my host family dinners usually had a piece of fish marinated like that as the main course.  Probably my favorite part of the bento was the simple yet flavorful California rolls, along with the cod of course.  

My one issue was the state of the bowl of rice that came with the bento, which I've been all too familiar with in my home city.  To put it simply, it was dry.  I've noticed the same thing from similar places like Marc's Fusion restaurant and other rice serving shops like Happy Wok.  If you want a good side-dish of plain rice, try somewhere like Mitsuwa's (Japanese supermarket toward Chicago) food court offerings that serve traditional Japanese style set meals.

Overall, I liked the place and wouldn't mind visiting there again in the future.