Hey there, long time no post! I've been away on vacation since Saturday. We made two trips to Salt Lake City and two trips to Lava Hot Springs (Idaho). Don't ask. Well, actually, do ask! You know I'll tell! (Using as many words and exclamation points and parentheses as possible.)
We went to SLC on Saturday for the Neil Diamond concert, which was great! Old Neil actually sounded a lot better than I thought he would (I had prepared myself for the worst), and he put on a great show. After the concert we ate a laaaaaate dinner at Bayleaf Bar & Grub downtown on Main Street, the only place I could think of that was open all night besides the pancake places. It was hot and busy in there, but we very much enjoyed our fried pickles, Korean bulgogi, and fried Twinkie a la mode.
The next morning we left for a family reunion in Lava Hot Springs, ID. Though Lava is very close to Logan (the drive takes just over an hour and a half), I had never been until I got married and started going to this reunion. What a place! I'm not sure I can explain it. Let's see. It's a resort/tourist community, but very unlike, say, Park City. All the main attractions in the town are water-related and within walking distance of each other, so the sidewalks and restaurants are filled at all hours of the day with people of all ages and all body types in all sorts of swimwear. A tiny little grocery market serves the town. Accommodations have...character. Nightlife consists of bars and bingo (or in our family, card games on the motel patio). If you've never been...GO! :)
We went swimming at the city pool complex, which features four large water slides and huge diving platforms, as well as an indoor pool. We also floated the Portneuf River, which is very popular tubing. We had to skip the biggest rapids at the top because we took our two- and four-year-old sons on the big tube with us, but we still had a fun little ride and got all wet. We only got to make one pass because we missed most of the tubing day due to our other trip to SLC, which was for a final job interview for my husband. Usually we spend several hours being ferried through Lava Hot Springs to ride the river again and again.
The only water-related activity in Lava Hot Springs we skipped out on was the hot springs themselves. Too hot for our little kids! Instead we enjoyed the warm spring-fed private pool next to the reunion site.
Dining options in Lava Hot Springs have improved over the last few years. We had some decent Thai food in a converted gas station and some very good burgers and fries at 78 Main, which is a new place at the site of the old (bad) Johnny's. Tyson had the Bacon & Blue burger, and I had a chicken burger with brie and fried green apple slices. Service was great and the restaurant has been freshened up inside.
I highly recommend staying at the Alpaca Inn, and I can't recommend any other motel in town. I love the off-Main Street location, grassy courtyard, and personal touches at this place. The owners are great and the rooms are clean and fresh (somewhat of a novelty in Lava) -- and alpaca-themed! Can't beat that! The other place in town I like isn't actually in town - it's up in the mountains. It's a fun little cabin (with running water, etc.) the owner rents out by the night. It's called the Abracadabra Lava Guest Home and it's a great little hideaway.
After three trips on I-15 that weekend, we drove back through Downey and Preston and saw the most gorgeous sunset ever. Right after I reminded my husband to watch his speed now that we weren't on the highway, he got pulled over for speeding. He was given a warning and we went on our way. Seriously, watch your speed if you ever travel through there!
Showing posts with label thai food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thai food. Show all posts
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
Black Pearl China Bistro & Sushi Bar, Logan, Utah - Restaurant Review
Update 6/21/2012: I've just gotten some new info about the Black Pearl Asian Bistro & Sushi in North Logan, Utah. First, "Black Pearl Asian Bistro & Sushi" is the new name on the menu I picked up today, a change from Black Pearl China Bistro & Sushi Bar (which still appears on the signs). Second, Black Pearl has a website featuring their menu at blackpearllogan.com and I've also included pics of the menu below. Third, the "50% Off All Sushi Rolls" special is actually available all day every day until further notice. Fourth, delivery is available. Fifth, the restaurant is only open for dinner on Sunday. Read on for the full original review.
We were pleasantly surprised by a couple of recent visits to the Black Pearl restaurant in North Logan. We had enjoyed the restaurant on our first and second visit when it opened in 2007, but then we had several mediocre and bad experiences that caused us to vow never to return.
Word of new management and the announcement of a half-price sushi special enticed us to try the place again, three years after our last visit. We went for lunch with Tyson's dad and ate a lot of decent-to-good sushi that was definitely a great value. We returned last week for lunch with our kids, and I have reviewed that visit below.
Black Pearl Asian Bistro & Sushi
2095 N. Main Street, Ste. C, North Logan, Utah 84341
435-750-0888
blackpearllogan.com
Hours: Monday-Thursday 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Friday 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m., Saturday 12 noon-10:30 p.m., Sunday 4 p.m.-9 p.m.
Price range: $3 - $15
Lunch combo: $5.95 - $8.95 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Specials: Black Pearl currently offers a 1/2 price deal on all sushi rolls (excluding Seafood Nanudo and Sweet Heart Maki) during all business hours.
Take-out Available: Yes
Delivery Available: Yes
Year Opened: 2007
Quick Reveiw of Black Pearl - Logan, Utah
At last the curse of the Black Pearl appears to be broken. After a few years of declining food quality and service, the Black Pearl has been revived and refined by new management. Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cuisine share the menu, with completely satisfactory and sometimes downright delicious results. Service can be hit or miss, as turnover in the waitstaff seems to be high. Lunch specials starting at $5.95 are a great bang for your buck and include soup, main course, rice, dumplings, and fried wantons. Sushi rolls are fresh and well-prepared, if a bit unimaginative. Here's to hoping it's smooth sailing for the Black Pearl from now on.
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Full Review of Black Pearl - Logan, Utah
Location & Ambiance
The Black Pearl China Bistro & Sushi Bar occupies a couple of units of a nondescript strip mall set back on the west side of Main Street in North Logan. The bland stucco exterior gives way to a strikingly-designed modern dining room with soaring ceilings, bamboo accents, and a rich and sedate color scheme of tans and blacks. This is one of the better looking restaurants in Logan, especially at this price point. Seating is mostly booths, with a couple of tables that can be pushed together to serve larger groups. Customers may also sit at the sushi bar along the back wall. The dining room and restrooms are clean and in good condition. Subdued lighting and interesting accents like a huge, curved "bamboo" wall give the restaurant a sophisticated ambiance.
Food
The menu includes Chinese selections, sushi and a few other Japanese items, and even a few Thai dishes. Most multi-cuisine restaurants fail at at least one (if not all) of their cuisines, but on a recent visit Black Pearl delivered at least competent and sometimes excellent selections from all three cuisines. When we arrived our friendly waitress promptly placed a plate of fried wonton strips on our table and took our drink orders. Litlle snacks like this are such a boon when one is dining with children! We started with a bowl of edamame, or salted green soybeans in the pod, because my kids love them. I believe they were $3. For our main selections we chose two lunch combo boxes and two sushi rolls, to be shared among all of us. The lunch boxes come with choice of soup, main course selected from a list of about 15 choices, side of fried rice, two fried cream cheese wontons, and two potstickers/dumplings, all for just $5.95 (add two or three dollars for shrimp selections). We chose honey walnut chicken and Thai yellow curry chicken. Our sushi roll choices were the Aloha Roll, which includes mango and a sweet sauce, and another more basic roll I can't remember the name of. They were both 1/2 off because of a weekday lunch special. The raw fish tasted clean and fresh, and the rolls were cohesive and well made. Our adventurous four-year-old son gobbled up just as many pieces as his parents did.
Soup selections include miso, hot & sour, wonton, and egg drop. We ordered one wonton soup and one egg drop soup, which arrived steaming hot and perfectly adequate in taste and portion. Soon after, the lunch boxes arrived, mounded with heaping portions of food. The huge pile of honey walnut chicken (traditional American-Chinese preparation with a mayonnaise-based sauce) was piping hot and tasty, with tons of chunks of battered and fried white chicken meat kissed by a glaze of the sweet, white sauce and dotted generously with candied walnuts. For me, though, the star of the show was the Thai curry. Chunks of chicken, loads of green beans and other veggies, and plenty of Thai basil swam in a complex and spicy yellow curry sauce. I only wish I had remembered to ask for white rice rather than fried rice to accompany the curry. I can't be certain the curry base didn't come from a container (there are some good prepared curry pastes out there), but even if it did, it was prepared properly and included a bounty of fresh ingredients. The dumplings and wantons were also good.
Coke and coke products are available in addition to jasmine tea, domestic and imported beers (including Tsing Tao and Sapporo), wines by the glass, and sake.
Service
Throughout our meal our server demonstrated the perfect combination of attentiveness and respect for our pace and our situation. She was kind to our children and always kept our glasses full. She cleared dishes promptly and checked back at appropriate times. We were happy to tip her generously and only wish she could stay long term at the Black Pearl. Unfortunately that would be the exception to the rule. Wait staff seems to have a high turnover rate at Black Pearl.
The Black Pearl is an ideal place for a date, an outing with friends or family, a business lunch, or even a solo lunch at the sushi bar. Well-behaved children are welcomed, but the menu and restaurant are not designed with kids in mind. I'm so glad to see the Black Pearl get back on track. I may be ready to crown it Logan's best Chinese restaurant!
LLL
P.S.: What has your experience been at Black Pearl? What other Chinese restaurants do you like in Logan and Cache Valley? Do you think most Chinese food kind of all tastes the same, especially at the take-out focused places? Well, did you know that all Chinese food tastes the same on the East Coast, too, but it tastes the same in a DIFFERENT way than it does here? True story!
Word of new management and the announcement of a half-price sushi special enticed us to try the place again, three years after our last visit. We went for lunch with Tyson's dad and ate a lot of decent-to-good sushi that was definitely a great value. We returned last week for lunch with our kids, and I have reviewed that visit below.
Black Pearl Asian Bistro & Sushi
2095 N. Main Street, Ste. C, North Logan, Utah 84341
435-750-0888
blackpearllogan.com
Hours: Monday-Thursday 11 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Friday 11 a.m.-10:30 p.m., Saturday 12 noon-10:30 p.m., Sunday 4 p.m.-9 p.m.
Price range: $3 - $15
Lunch combo: $5.95 - $8.95 11 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Specials: Black Pearl currently offers a 1/2 price deal on all sushi rolls (excluding Seafood Nanudo and Sweet Heart Maki) during all business hours.
Take-out Available: Yes
Delivery Available: Yes
Year Opened: 2007
Quick Reveiw of Black Pearl - Logan, Utah
At last the curse of the Black Pearl appears to be broken. After a few years of declining food quality and service, the Black Pearl has been revived and refined by new management. Chinese, Japanese, and Thai cuisine share the menu, with completely satisfactory and sometimes downright delicious results. Service can be hit or miss, as turnover in the waitstaff seems to be high. Lunch specials starting at $5.95 are a great bang for your buck and include soup, main course, rice, dumplings, and fried wantons. Sushi rolls are fresh and well-prepared, if a bit unimaginative. Here's to hoping it's smooth sailing for the Black Pearl from now on.
---
Full Review of Black Pearl - Logan, Utah
Location & Ambiance
The Black Pearl China Bistro & Sushi Bar occupies a couple of units of a nondescript strip mall set back on the west side of Main Street in North Logan. The bland stucco exterior gives way to a strikingly-designed modern dining room with soaring ceilings, bamboo accents, and a rich and sedate color scheme of tans and blacks. This is one of the better looking restaurants in Logan, especially at this price point. Seating is mostly booths, with a couple of tables that can be pushed together to serve larger groups. Customers may also sit at the sushi bar along the back wall. The dining room and restrooms are clean and in good condition. Subdued lighting and interesting accents like a huge, curved "bamboo" wall give the restaurant a sophisticated ambiance.
Food
The menu includes Chinese selections, sushi and a few other Japanese items, and even a few Thai dishes. Most multi-cuisine restaurants fail at at least one (if not all) of their cuisines, but on a recent visit Black Pearl delivered at least competent and sometimes excellent selections from all three cuisines. When we arrived our friendly waitress promptly placed a plate of fried wonton strips on our table and took our drink orders. Litlle snacks like this are such a boon when one is dining with children! We started with a bowl of edamame, or salted green soybeans in the pod, because my kids love them. I believe they were $3. For our main selections we chose two lunch combo boxes and two sushi rolls, to be shared among all of us. The lunch boxes come with choice of soup, main course selected from a list of about 15 choices, side of fried rice, two fried cream cheese wontons, and two potstickers/dumplings, all for just $5.95 (add two or three dollars for shrimp selections). We chose honey walnut chicken and Thai yellow curry chicken. Our sushi roll choices were the Aloha Roll, which includes mango and a sweet sauce, and another more basic roll I can't remember the name of. They were both 1/2 off because of a weekday lunch special. The raw fish tasted clean and fresh, and the rolls were cohesive and well made. Our adventurous four-year-old son gobbled up just as many pieces as his parents did.
Soup selections include miso, hot & sour, wonton, and egg drop. We ordered one wonton soup and one egg drop soup, which arrived steaming hot and perfectly adequate in taste and portion. Soon after, the lunch boxes arrived, mounded with heaping portions of food. The huge pile of honey walnut chicken (traditional American-Chinese preparation with a mayonnaise-based sauce) was piping hot and tasty, with tons of chunks of battered and fried white chicken meat kissed by a glaze of the sweet, white sauce and dotted generously with candied walnuts. For me, though, the star of the show was the Thai curry. Chunks of chicken, loads of green beans and other veggies, and plenty of Thai basil swam in a complex and spicy yellow curry sauce. I only wish I had remembered to ask for white rice rather than fried rice to accompany the curry. I can't be certain the curry base didn't come from a container (there are some good prepared curry pastes out there), but even if it did, it was prepared properly and included a bounty of fresh ingredients. The dumplings and wantons were also good.
Coke and coke products are available in addition to jasmine tea, domestic and imported beers (including Tsing Tao and Sapporo), wines by the glass, and sake.
Service
Throughout our meal our server demonstrated the perfect combination of attentiveness and respect for our pace and our situation. She was kind to our children and always kept our glasses full. She cleared dishes promptly and checked back at appropriate times. We were happy to tip her generously and only wish she could stay long term at the Black Pearl. Unfortunately that would be the exception to the rule. Wait staff seems to have a high turnover rate at Black Pearl.
The Black Pearl is an ideal place for a date, an outing with friends or family, a business lunch, or even a solo lunch at the sushi bar. Well-behaved children are welcomed, but the menu and restaurant are not designed with kids in mind. I'm so glad to see the Black Pearl get back on track. I may be ready to crown it Logan's best Chinese restaurant!
LLL
P.S.: What has your experience been at Black Pearl? What other Chinese restaurants do you like in Logan and Cache Valley? Do you think most Chinese food kind of all tastes the same, especially at the take-out focused places? Well, did you know that all Chinese food tastes the same on the East Coast, too, but it tastes the same in a DIFFERENT way than it does here? True story!
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| Click image for larger version of menu |
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| Click the image to open a large, readable version of the menu |
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| Click the image to open a large, readable version of the menu |
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