With this Memorial Day weekend comes the unofficial start of summer and the promise of a better year. We are finally fully vaccinated and ready to start living again. The restaurants in Maryland are open and we are slowly getting back out there. While it feels a bit strange to be eating in public, we have a new appreciation for the luxury of restaurants and enjoying good food that someone else has prepared for us.

One of our first ventures out in public was on a Monday and we found that all the restaurants we were planning to visit were closed. We were defeated; and then we saw the sign in front of Tsunami Ramen & Tapas announcing “All Day Happy Hour” on Mondays. It was fate.

As octopus lovers, we went straight for the Takoyaki: fried octopus balls. They were crispy balls with a fluffy interior hiding chunks of octopus, served with a sweet okonomiyaki sauce and topped with lots of salty bonito flakes. New, exciting flavors. We suddenly remembered what we had been missing for a long time…the element of surprise when finding something new and entirely unexpected.

A sister restaurant to Lazy Fish Sushi, Tsunami bravely opened in the spring of 2020 during the pandemic. We are happy to have them. We have enjoyed every dish that we’ve tried so far. The specials are always beautifully done and just look at how pretty the Seared Cajun Scallops are! These scallops and the Takoyaki are now a regular part of our diet. 

I have had a long break from writing—nearly a year—and it may be a while before I get back to writing full length blog posts. So, I’m taking baby steps with brief posts to bring Julia Eats back to life. It is such a joy to be having experiences worth sharing again and there is so much to be experienced in our little town of Frederick.  Summertime, here we come.