First Thoughts On Koi Fusion

I love Asian food, what can I say? If the place is close enough for lunch, I’ll definitely give it a try.

Thanks to the power of text messaging, one of my friends gave me a heads up of a new Asian restaurant that just opened up at 37^th and Woodlawn in the old Samurai building near the southeast corner of the intersection.

Koi Fusion
6605 E 37^th St
Wichita, KS 67226https://www.facebook.com/pages/Koi-Fusion/399857083455282

The restaurant includes a mix of Thai, Japanese and Vietnamese food. Most of the main dishes are an assortment of teriyaki, pho oodles and hibachi grill cooking. They are open from Monday through Saturday 11 am to 9 pm.

I wasn't drunk when I took this picture

I have made my way out there twice since they opened last month; both for lunch.

Their menu is a little similar to that of Tsunami, also located at the intersection of 37^th and Woodlawn but at the northwest corner. Tsunami’s menu is much more colorful and displays pictures of some of the menu items.

The first time I went, I tried the pho. It was one of those random cold days in Wichita that come what seems like every four days. I ran into some friends there who had a teriyaki dish and loved it. My Pho was pretty good. I would say it’s much better than Tsunami’s and Pho Hot but not as good as Pho Hein or My Tho’. Ordered it with a side of spring rolls and it all hit the spot; it’s hard to mess up spring rolls.

The second time I went with friends and a buddy ordered the pho while the rest ordered the pad thai, me included. Along with the pad thai, I ordered a side of shrimp salad rolls. It’s been a while since I’ve had some and had a pregnant woman style craving; not that I know what that even feels like. While eating the pad thai we all came to an agreement that it was much better than Tsunami’s pad thai but not as good as Thai Traditions which specializes in it. My buddy who had the pho liked it and mentioned he’d eat it again and he’s not the biggest pho fan out there. He still has trouble pronouncing it so that should give a little insight on whether it’s worth it.

The service was nice and friendly. The manager from Tsunami is actually working at Koi Fusion now. It caught us all by surprise like when Kevin Youkilis became a Yankee.

Overall Koi Fusion is an Asian restaurant that does all sorts of food well but not excellent as in the best in Wichita. That isn’t meant to be a knock on them at all. There are many restaurants I’ve been to that have large menu’s but it’s all fluff and below average food. All of Koi Fusion’s is really good but I would never call it the best.

As my friend calls it, "Shrimp Bodybags"

Definitely check it out for yourself sometime. Tell them you saw the review on Wichita By E.B.!

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Day Three of Live Below The Line

I’ll make this short and sweet.

Day 3 was miserable.

Breakfast was two peanut butter sandwiches and two glasses of water.

Fast-forward to lunch. I’m out of ramen noodles, out of bananas, and didn’t feel like eating peanut butter sandwiches. They were getting old. So I skipped lunch.

Fortunately staying busy kept my mind occupied. When I got home, I ate leftover spaghetti and meat sauce and watched TV. All the NBA games on TV kept me from thinking about eating anymore food for the day.

Only thing I have left is four slices of bread and a bag of noodles, needless to say I’m going to have to throw in the towel on Thursday. I have a three hour drive ahead of me for personal travel in the evening which follows a personal dinner engagement that was suddenly put on my calendar.

Driving on an empty stomach would be no good for my safety, at least that’s what I’m telling myself.

How people in third world countries live off of such small amounts of food is beyond me. When you see those commercials of the starving children all over the world and how skinny they are, I totally believe it. How they can even crack a smile surprises me. Seriously being hungry all the time really messes with your mood. I was far from “starvation” but deep into constantly being hungry that it effected how I felt, what my mind was thinking, etc. It’s no overreaction. I also learned I will probably never make it on the TV show, Survivor. Being hungry and having to only eat rice and whatever you can find will make me constantly paranoid about being voted off.

Thursday night, I’m going to make up on some lost food time.

Day Two of Live Below The Line

Day 2 officially in the books.

Tuesday started off with a banana and a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter. I was extremely hungry from the night before but it was enough to hold off the appetite until later. By the way, thanks to all the suggestions on banana and peanut butter. Best combo I’ve had in the past couple weeks since 7Up and vodka. As the morning progressed, I found myself to be more tired than usual. I was running on the same amount of sleep as usual, if not more, so read into that what you will.

Once noon hit, I decided to change it up and go with a bag of ramen noodles for lunch. For some reason, it took me a while to finish it. Rewinding back to when I first moved out of my first parents, ramen noodles would easily suffice for lunch. Fast-forward to today, it was probably the most unsatisfying lunch I’ve had in a long time.

Throughout the rest of the day, my energy level was really low. It was a mixture of being sore from basketball, lack of food, and lack of proper nutrients. I was drinking water throughout the day but that starts to taste bland when you’re hungry. I considered adding peanut butter, pepper, and hand sanitizer….something, just to throw the taste off and change it up a bit. Side note, hand sanitizer is 62% ethyl alcohol, is that even safe mixed in water?

The moment I got home, I crashed and crashed fast. Couple hours later, I found myself lying in bed wondering what happened. It felt like midnight but it was really 7 pm. Took me a while to figure out what woke me up. My stomach. Walked over to my kitchen, boiled some water, dropped the spaghetti in it and waited until completion. Spaghetti and meat sauce for dinner again sounded like the plan. This time around, each time I took a bite I could literally taste the small morsels of meat in the sauce. I savored each bite.

I finished my dinner while watching my Redbox movie and sat on the couch thinking to myself, “I just spent more on my movie rental than my dinner.”

If my life was a movie, I’d probably call it “Hunger Games”.

So with Day 2 over, I found myself to be hungrier than day one. My mood was kind of in a funk, my energy levels were low, and I was really annoyed at all the Facebook pictures and Tweets I would see of people’s food. It’s like they are rubbing it in my face subconsciously.

Have a great Wednesday everybody. Enjoy your hamburgers, steaks, lobster, $5 foot longs, fries, chicken, sushi, etc.

(Why did I just type that, officially getting hungrier again)

Day One of Live Below The Line

Day One of Project Live Below The Line ended harder than it started. (If you missed, my food listing post for Live Below The Line, read it here)

I took a banana, package of ramen noodles, a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter with me to work Monday morning. Goal was to eat the banana for breakfast and two peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. The ramen noodles were emergency in case I was in dire need of food.

Morning passed by and I totally forgot to eat the banana. I figured I could then save that for my afternoon snack. For lunch, I made two peanut butter sandwiches. The loaf of the bread was smaller than I recall bread being. The slices were pretty tiny. The taste of the peanut butter was off too; I’m not sure if it was my mind or the actual taste. The two sandwiches still did the trick and cured my hunger for the afternoon.

Playing 9 holes of golf was on the itinerary after work so my new plan was to eat the banana right before golf. After eating the banana, I was instantly amazed how good they were. It’s been possibly decades since I had bananas on a regular basis (aka a child living at home and having my parents by them)…… AND they are cheap. That all right there will tell you how often I go grocery shopping.

Headed to the golf course after work and took me about 2 hours to get through 9 holes. My group walked the course instead of using a cart. Now I’m not sure if it’s because of my allergies, or that I am just not a good golfer or my body was lacking energy from the lack of food, but that was my worst golf outing of the year. It seemed as if nothing was going right. I couldn’t stay focused at all.

While on the 9^th hole, I received a call to go play some pickup basketball. Decided “why not?” I followed up golf with two hours of basketball on an empty stomach. The two hours were all adrenaline. My stomach was hurting from hunger and I could feel it slow me down.

The moment I walked into my house, I cooked some of the spaghetti. Ate it with no sauce and crashed.

Upon waking up today, my body feels weird. I’m supposed to go play golf later this afternoon but am not sure I have the energy to do so. It’s one thing to live on a $1.50 of food a day but it’s another thing to do it and go be active. Where do you find the energy? How do you defeat the hunger pains?

It looks like I’m going to have a rough few days ahead of me.

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Shopping for Live Below The Line

It wasn’t until Sunday evening that I realized that I still needed to get food for my “Live Below The Line” project. Aldi’s was closed, Target was too far away, and Dillon’s may have been a little overpriced so my only option was Wal-Mart.

Pacing up and down the aisles at Wal-Mart, it took me about 45 minutes to figure out how do fit inside a $6 budget. Multiple times, I found myself stopping, pulling out the calculator app on my phone, and putting items back on the shelf.

For instance, a loaf of bread of the Great Value brand ran $1.15 and spaghetti was $1. Those were the first two items I picked up. While grabbing other items, my budget was exceeded and I had to go back and re-price those items. I would find even further off brand items at 98 cents for bread and 82 cents for spaghetti.

One of the biggest items on my list was peanut butter. I wanted some protein and something that was easy to snack on during the day to cure my impending hunger concerns. Peanut butter is not cheap. People warned me that price for that had grown substantially through the years. Rising food costs is one of the things I don’t pay attention to so I didn’t believe them and I was wrong. Any good size jar of peanut butter would run over $4, the smaller jars were $2.40 or so. Hiding on the bottom shelf in the corner was a jar for $1.92. Very sneaky, Wal-Mart.

One of the biggest decisions for me was whether to buy tomato paste for noodles at 66 cents or canned “meat flavor” spaghetti sauce for 92 cents. I went with the latter in hopes of adding at least a little flavor to the meal and having the bigger can last me at least three days.

The deal of the day was the two bananas. They were half off until midnight; two for under 20 cents. After checking out, I had a little under a dollar left so stopped by Dillon’s to see what I could get. It was between a bag of rice and a can of vegetables (the frozen kind would have put me over my budget). I went with the rice.

So $6 and four days, this is what I’m going to be eating:

Bread - $0.98
Spaghetti - $0.82
Noodles - $0.36
Sauce - $0.92
Peanut Butter - $1.92
Bananas - $0.18
Rice - $0.79

Let’s see how this goes…………