Family friendly, good value

Revisiting Samurai in Mill Valley, I was happy to see the good things remained. It is still very family friendly, I was surrounded by families enjoying each other and their food save for one other single woman (who was enjoying her food too). I was pleasantly surprised to see that the combination dinners were still an excellent value at $13.50 for you choice of a fairly extensive list! So I chose a combination for this evening.

The trio of simmered vegetables (carrot, onion and potato), crisp cucumber salad (with all the bitter seeds removed), and flavorful miso came out at once.

My combo was the tempura and vegetable sukiyaki combination. The tempura was great, crisp outside, moist inside and seemed like it was make with fresh oil. The host was very accommodating about substituting vegetable sukiyaki for chicken or beef which suited me fine as I wanted to lighten it up a bit, knowing the generous portions at this restaurant.

NOTE: I'm posting this from Visalia where I'm staying while working with a dream client (the proactive, forward thinking kind). I'm a friendly type, so there seems to be nearly nowhere I've been where I haven't had a friend or connection nearby. Given that, I was really happy to meet a friend for dinner in Exeter who lives in Three Rivers (a community known for it's artists). Exeter was a delightful small town which preserves its buildings in a different time period, and has beautiful murals around town. Also, the smell of orange blossoms is heavy in the air as soon as you make the turn off Hwy 198 and go towards Exeter. Everywhere you go in the town, the beautiful scent wafts by now and again. We met at a local Mexican restaurant, Vallarta. It was authentic and good, try it if you are by that way.

On the way back, ironically since part of my mission here was doing media training for crisis scenarios, I had my own crisis. My Prius decided to show several 'bad' alarms across the dashboard. I managed to get it back to the hotel before going into full female freak-out. Luckily I have some friends who recognize this malady and were reachable by phone to push me back into problem solving mode. This trip will have some interesting turns!

Previously reviewed:
December 13, 2006