Last night, Patrick of @feedmyphone fame invited a number of fellow foodies and I to a Media Tasting at Moji Japanese Eatery.  Moji Japanese Eatery is a casual and modern Japanese-inspired restaurant that serves eats like rice, udon, appetizers, drinks, and desserts.  They have a brand new menu (for food and dessert and drinks!), one of which featured a Toroniku (pork cheek meat) Ramen.

I was excited to be part of the FeedMyPhoneInstaMeet get-together to try out these brand new menu items.  I always love Patrick’s events too because they are well thought out and coupled with the most adorable name cards and take-away gifts!

First, take a look at the brand new menus at Moji Japanese Eatery!  Click to view a larger image.

The tasting menu for the evening was already set for us.

Upon arriving, the server took our orders for a drink.  Since it was snow squalling outside, I ordered a hot drink to start, a Hot Authentic Japanese Matcha Milk Tea.  This tasted very smooth and was a perfect comfort drink with a strong matcha taste.

The #FeedMyPhoneInstaMeet was very casual.  We shared the appetizers family-style and then enjoyed our own bowls of ramen and dessert.

The Cheese Tiger Prawns came in four and were fresh shrimp on a skewer drizzled with cheese sauce, Japanese mayo, and topped with strips of nori and bonito flakes.  I absolutely loved this appetizer because the shrimps were so fresh and tasted great with the sauce.  This was so good that I asked for seconds too.

The Crispy Lobster Crunch was served with seaweed salad in the bowl and you ate it by spooning the lobster pieces onto the pieces of nori.  The pieces of lobster in the dish were substantial!

I love Tako Wasabi and these pieces of chopped up octopus marinated in wasabi stem were perfectly done.  They were spicy thanks to the strong wasabi.  This was delicious!

The Chicken Karaage were large pieces of fried chicken in a bowl topped with cheese sauce, Japanese mayo, strips of nori, and bonito flakes.

The Wasabi Tobiko Takoyaki were plump fried balls with octopus inside.

The Tuna Tataki was another one of my favourites that night.  It was one of the new items on the menu.  The slices of raw tuna were paired with scallions and soy sauce.  I really liked the freshness of each piece and how the accompanying sauces didn’t overwhelm the delicate tuna flavour.

After the appetizers, the server took our orders for the ramen.  The brand new Toroniku Ramen came in non-spicy or spicy.  (Toroniku cha-shu is simmered pork cheek [jowl] meat.)  The spicy version actually had a spoonful of the spicy paste on it whereby which you could moderate how much you actually added to the bowl of ramen.  Thus, after hearing this explanation, everybody in the group decided to order the spicy version.

At this time, I also tried out one of their cold drinks, the Iced Ginger Fruit Lemonade.  This was refreshing and tarty thanks to the lemonade.

The ramen orders came out quite promptly for everyone and once it did, everyone got to work on their individual photo shoots for the ramen bowls.  The Spicy Toroniku Ramen came with rich broth with the spicy pasted on a spoon, and a plate full of the toroniku pork cheek slices, black fungus, bamboo shoots; the half-boiled eggs in a separate dish; and some spicy powder in a shake-container all on the side.  It was a cute tray of deliciousness!  After a few photos, I was ready to dig in to try this brand new ramen.

I really liked the consistency and texture of the ramen noodles.  This was my first time eating ramen at Moji (I had previously been here for dinner and only tried their rice and udon — you can read about the experience here).  I was impressed with the al dente-like texture of the ramen.  I really liked the broth as well.  What I loved the most though, like many others commented on, was the smoothness of the pork cheeks and how delicious they were.  They were slightly salted already and oh-so-thin!  I loved this. 🙂

We finished off with the dessert, also a brand new one:  Tapioca Black Milk Tea Soft Serve.  This was presented in Moji-style; a serving of soft serve ice cream swirled in a plastic cup, with a Pocky stuck on its side, and served on a tray with the Moji business card displayed in front.  For this dessert though, there were also dozens of tapioca pearls surrounding the swirl of soft serve ice cream.

The Milk Tea Soft Serve ice cream really did taste like a cup of milk tea!  I was impressed.  Also, the tapioca pearls were very chewy and smooth; just the way they should be.  Yum!

Thank you so much to Patrick and the staff at Moji Japanese Eatery for hosting and providing such a satisfying and thoroughly delicious tasting menu for us.  Everything was considered thoughtfully for us foodies, from the name cards to the items on the tasting menu, to the exemplary service that night.  Again, thank you to Alyssa @bunnybumboxes for the creative ornament gifts and mason cup of portable hot chocolate, Jenny @cardsbyjd for the name cards, and to Love Me Sweet for their cheesecake parting gifts!  What an absolutely delightful night it was and also a great ending to tasting parties of 2016! 🙂

Some more photos from the evening:

FTC Disclaimer:  Although @feedmyphone invited me to a complimentary tasting to showcase Moji Japanese Eatery, the opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of the companies.