Return to Kanpai

[This is a rarity - posting on the same day of the visit!]

After having been at Kanpai once back in September, Bert and I wanted to come back again. It's on the corner of Third and Palomar. See the yellow sign? KD's DoNuts dude....

We got the corner booth, yay! The folks (a man and his toddler daughter) behind us must have been family because the older waitress who helped us occasionally held the little girl and referred to herself as "grandma". The little girl had that exotic look, you know half Japanese, half Caucasian, really light brown hair. She was adorable. Our waitress was super nice. I felt like this was the kind of place where they know their regulars just listening to her interact with the customers.

I wanted to get something different from before, although I did like the chanpon. It was kind of chilly today and some kind of soup would be nice.

We liked the eel skin roll the last time so we got it again. I really like the thin sheets of shaved bonito.

Bert's two item combo...there was also an orange slice with cucumber salad, some sort of noodle thing, rice and green salad with ginger dressing.

Sesame chicken:

Fried oysters on top of shredded cabbage:

I ordered the combination set. One the menu, it's on the bottom left corner. There were three choices. This was the second choice which was Tonjiru (a pork based soup flavored with miso) with three onigiri (rice balls). The onigiri flavors were (plum in the front, dried fish in the middle, and in the very back, salmon). I thought the radioactively hued yellow vegetable (turned out to be daikon) was going to be a horrible pickle (not too fond of pickes, me) but there was no sour taste. It was almost sweet.

Here is my Tonjiru - the bowl was compact but it was totally filled with meat (pork, fish cake) and vegetables (napa cabbage, sliced scallions, carrots, gobo root, sweet yam, taro, and potato) as well as tofu and thinly sliced konyaku. No noodles but man, this was pretty filling!

I think I love this soup...

And because I can't help but act like a 12 year old boy, back by popular demand, the sign across the street from Kanpai...

The donuts suck by the way although the lady who works there is nice. Let's say I took one for the team...