Delicious Food in Carmel

We had a ton of fun up at Monterey's Jazz Festival. Maceo Parker was his usual funky self and of course all the other musicians were excellent too. Maceo played a couple different stages at the festival, but the first one he played with the Next Generation Orchestra, which is a group of 15, 16 and 17 year old musicians. A couple of the saxophone players even got to jam with Maceo one on one and I couldn't believe how awesome they were. It was very cool to see such young musicians playing with a legend like Maceo Parker in front of thousands of people.

After the festival we hung out in Carmel and ate some sushi for dinner and learned valuable sushi etiquette, of which I will only apply some rules. For example:

1. When you offer sushi to someone else, extend your plate. Don't pick off a piece with your own chopsticks.
2. If you take some sushi off of someone else's plate (after being offered of course) use the opposite ends of your chopsticks.
3. When you set your chopsticks down, place them at the top of your plate and parallel to yourself. Don't set them directly on the table.
4. If you use soy sauce, always dip fish side down. Soy sauce is intended to flavor the fish, not the rice.
5. Don't make Wasabi soup with your soy sauce. Supposedly this takes away from the flavor of the roll which is rude to the chef. This is one that I am not going to follow. I love wasabi soup!
6. Once you pick something up with your chopsticks, don't set it back down on your plate. Take a bite and keep it on your chopsticks. I don't think I can do this either as my chopstick skills are not that good, but I can cram the whole piece in my mouth and therefore follow this rule.

After sushi we ate a giant sizzling cookie and then took a round about way back to Marissa's apartment so we could walk off a few calories. I'm not a big fan of warm cookie and ice cream, but I ate it anyway. It's hard to resist even if it's not my favorite dessert.

In the morning we went to breakfast at this Mediterranean cafe and I ordered a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich which wasn't actually a Philly Cheesesteak sandwich because it was either made with your choice of tri-tip or chicken and came on a cibatta roll. I ordered tri-tip and it was very tasty anyway...it just wasn't Philly, but then again, you can really only have a Philly Cheesesteak in Philly.

All of this good eating inspired me to plan a US tour eating at various states. I really want go to Philadelphia so I can order a cheesesteak and say, "Provolone with," like I'm a local. We could go to Maine or Boston for lobster, New York for whatever, and the south for BBQ. Yum!