Date Night at Geisha House...I'm More Asian Than This Place

D and I really try to have one date night a week where we go out and we don't cook. We have a drink, some food, and we always have really great conversations. Even though she can't do it I could go to a (insert National Coffee Chain Brand Name Here) order a venti, errr Large cup of coffee, sit in a comfy chair and talk for hours. Not to go all mushy but she's my other half, good thing because I'm marrying her right?

ANYway. Friday night we had planned on making this really great vegetable soup and staying in but I could tell that neither one of us was up for cooking. Shocking I know right? Part of D's Christmas gift this year was a bunch of restaurant.com gift certificates to different places. The idea was that we could try out different food on date nights for cheaper. We're saving for a wedding here. If you have never used the site it is awesome. I bought 25$ gift certificates for 2$. There are some restrictions but hey, it's free money. So Friday night wasn't allowed on any of the cards except for PJ's Abbey and Geisha House. We both decided on a little more healthy and Geisha House since it is basically right down the street. Weird right? Large chic Japanese restaurant with its roots in Hollywood home of small portions and big prices decides to open a place in a Santa Ana shopping mall home of small tacos and big burritos. It will all make sense in a second. Ok here's the secret about Geisha House's location.

I... of the white, German, Scottish, blonde, blue eyed ancestry... am more Asian than this place will ever be. It makes sense that the only person in here that greeted us in Japanese, was Mexican. D IS Asian and  one of my more constant refrains is, "I should have been born Asian." (To which D replies, "I don't date Asians,") so it goes without saying that we have a pretty good idea of what good Asian food tastes like. This was not it.

I might go so far as to say my favorite "American Chinese Food" place called Golden Dragon complete with warming trays of unidentified meat with familiar names like General Tso, is more Asian than this place. Not that the food was awful it just didn't taste like it should anything. Seasoning was woeful.

"Spicy tuna tartare on crispy rice cracker" should have read,

"Crispy on the outside, mushy on the inside(sounds like a bad rap song anybody know the one?) rice bun topped with spicy in one area only, pretty much tasteless everywhere else, tuna pate and tobiko for color."

The sushi rolls they offered sounded very interesting and I was excited by the "geisha's lips" hey now, don't get all dirty on me here. It was supposed to be crab, spicy tuna, avocado, sprouts, wrapped in a cucumber skin. Sounds nice and light right? Basically the chef's knife skills were non existent because the cucumber skin was about 1/2 an inch thick. Far be it from me to criticize a "sushi chef's" knife skills but I'm sure I could have cut a thinner skin with a rusty railroad tie. He did make up for it though by cramming a lot of stuff into that "skin." It was just too bad it was undernon-seasoned crab salad, a hacked off piece of tuna, and I think there might have been some avocado in one or two of the pieces. Don't get me wrong it didn't taste bad but there really isn't any way something can taste bad if it has no taste.

The one bright spot of the night foodwise? I got D to try some salmon and she liked it! She is particular about her fish so I have to make sure I introduce her to things when I know for sure she will like them. The salmon was not fishy (again with the non-taste, taste and this place) and cooked well.

Our bill was large, our taste, small. Needless to say I would rather wait for an hour outside a nondescript Fountain Valley Ramen place with my name on a piece of notebook paper waiting for somebody to mispronounce my name to call our table and look at me funny because I am white than go back to Geisha House.