A couple of weeks ago, I took a cute boy to one of my favorite Japanese restaurants in LA. Incidentally it’s also one of my favorite vegan restaurants–Shojin, the quiet gem tucked away modestly on the third floor of a somewhat intimidating, very Asian mall downtown.

First of all, Shojin’s menu comes in a binder, if that’s any indication of how many ordering choices you have.

Second of all, while they were at Staples shopping for binders, they clearly stumbled upon these:

which led to a whole lot of this:

I ordered iced tea and my date had ginger ale, which I took a sip of before he even realized the eagle had landed. Make myself comfortable, why don’t I?

As I sat down, I realized that I had lost my new, favorite, gift from my mommy purple scarf somewhere on the sojourn between car and restaurant.

I spent the entire dinner trying to imagine the whereabouts and foresee the fate of most favorite scarf.

I let my date order since the entire menu reads like a series of haikus with pictures. In the spirit of bossing me around, he then stole my camera, set it to macro, and took my pictures for me. I’m taking him with me everywhere, whether he likes it or not.

We had the crispy curry broccoli and tofu served with Shojin ketchup:

good shit yo.

Then we ordered the Shojin Go-Zen, a balanced assortment of traditional Shojin style dishes:

Seitan Pepper Steak:

daily vegetable dishes:

kind of the most majestic tempura I’ve ever seen:

(p.s. maybe I should limit the use of “majestic” to sea creatures?)

Then, because for some reason that wasn’t enough, we ordered The Caterpillar Roll with BBQ Seitan and Avocado:

At this point we were pretty full and I was in not-so-silent mourning over my lost scarf. So…..

Only one thing left to do, really.

Schooled him, naturally. I don’t think he realized what he was getting into when he agreed to play Scrabble with me. Cause why on earth would he have guessed that I secretly played expert Sri Lankan strangers online for months a year during a very slow phase at work?

I’m going to file that under never should have admitted.

Got up to leave the restaurant and guess what I found:

That’s more of a happy ending than any other I can think of that involves an Asian setting and a great date. Oh wait….