for the third time!!!!!!! another birthday outting!!! except we were a week late to make this one happen and a week late to write this post. what a slacker i am. anyways if you don’t know, then you should know: february 28 (not gonna say what year) we were given the gift of nani. my #1 girly always.

nani never makes a big deal about her birthday, hence why we didn’t celebrate until march 6th and even then she tried to get out of having a celebration because she was “sick.” ANYWAYS nani HAD to come out because sometime i do make the rules. and when i’m making the rules… i typically end up making the plans. not to toot my own horn but i AM pretty good with finding good spots and crafting beautiful plans. hit me up for any and all help with itineraries. now that you know that we can talk about a napa gem.

i can never make a short story, short so here goes the long story!

every so often i like to scroll through google maps and just find restaurants/bars that i think are worth trying based on their vibes, menus, etc. because i HATE wanting to go out and trying something new and having no idea where to go. so every time a video recommends a place or i have a good google find — it’s automatically added to one of my many google lists.

on one of my many “google maps scroll days” i found myself perusing through downtown napa and… i found her. i’m not gonna tell you what she’s called yet because there’s still a story to be told.

i found this restaurant right on first street and yeah the menu looked good and well enough for me to add it to the list just for that until i saw it. hidden at the end of the list in the dessert section laid the thai tea tres leches cake. and if you don’t know, now you do know that my mom is OBSESSED with tres leches cake. so it didn’t become just want to go kinda place, it became a HAD to go kinda place. and nani’s birthday is an event worth a have to go kinda place. it also helped she said she wanted some kind of asian food.

what we didn’t realize until we got there was that there was a restaurant with the same name on the same street. CRAZY. and sadly the one that we made our resis at, was the one that DIDN’T have the cake and we didn’t find that out until the very end. how we came acrosss this great discovery was that we parked at the parking garage and walked right past where our actual reservations were and headed to the corner of third and main to morimoto ASIA and when we tried to check in for our reservations we were informed that there was a restaurant maybe 5 doors down called morimoto NAPA. the difference is morimoto asia is chinese and morimoto napa is japanese.

now that how we got there is out of the way we can talk about the important stuff: food and drinks.

to start i obviously had to order the cocktail called lipstick on a corpse/corpse reviver no. 2 which is nonino apertivo, mezcal, lavendar, and lemon. not only is the name so me because i’m a lip color girly and i love the corpse bride/corpse bride-eque vibes but also because the ingredients are so me because nonino reminds me of amaro nonino which is used in a paper plane, and also i just love mezcal and lavender. and i must say it was such a beautiful combo i wish i could have it again and again. i wanna say that nani got the casual encounter which is cucumber infused vodka, lemon, and ginger liqueur which was so very good even though i’m not really a fan of cucumber. nonetheless it was a very nani/girly drink cause it was so light and refreshing + mmmmm we looooovve ginger. tony more than likely had the waygu old fashion (waygu infused woodenville whiskey + frangelico) and it was a lot sweeter than i expected it to be but i feel like that’s in part to the frangelico which is an italian hazelnut liqueur that has notes of cocoa and vanilla. and obviously i love to finish my nights off with a glass of wine so i had the hill family albarino (2022). all i have to say is it was a safe choice because there was nothing too memorable but it was still really crispy and enjoyable. it’s hard not to enjoy a crispy wine with just a tiny bit of a bite.

obviously you guys know not to ask me about sushi because not only do i not know what they ordered, but i did not even get close to trying one. there is one thing i know though; tony got some unagi but i think it was only 3/12 rolls. don’t quote me on anything.

nani and i pulled my favorite move ever and ordered two entrees and split them so that we could have the best of both worlds. let me just say i’m glad we did that because although both plates were really good… one entree blew everything on the table out of the park. to save the best for last we’ll start with the angry chicken. whoever mary is, her chickens are used to pair with morimoto seven spice and blistered peppers. i wish that this was the first thing i put in my mouth because it was really good chicken but i feel like we should’ve ordered a side of rice or something with it because just by itself, or with the peppers i guess, it was missing something. i can’t remember anything notable because i’m such a big slacker and i’m writing this on april 5 with absolutely no notes just my memories and a google search of their menu. if you’re not a seafood fan this is probably the best thing on the menu for you. along with their rolls, the parents split the halibut xo, which you guessed it is halibut with xo sauce, seasonal veggies, and aji tama (matinated soft boiled egg). i have been scared to eat halibut ever since the summer-fishing-dinner-halibut-curry incident from summer 2024 where everyone got sick but this one was really good and soft. which leads us to the OTHER star of the night (because nani was the main one) the braised black cod. god sent morimoto the best cod to swin in his seas and paired it with a ginger soy reduction and with that came the softest fish that melted in your moth with one of the most beautiful flavors EVER. i kid you not it was like putting a piece of butter in your mouth and letting it melt but it was actually a piece of fish. how can something be so delicious. thank god i’m not scared to eat fish.

not pictured but definetly eaten were the edamame and the gyoza (not sure which one but it was fire)

the vibes, food, and drinks were top tier therefore next i wanna try morimoto ASIA because it has to be just as good.