Nakama at the Consol Energy Center

This past tuesday as the work day was winding down, I received a phone call from a dear friend of mine who is a teacher stating that she is enjoying the fact that she was done working, enjoyed the sunshine, and made fun of me because I was still working. Of course, I couldn't really say anything to get back at her. A few minutes later, I received a call from another friend and she said she and her boyfriend had tickets to the Penguins game from his boss at work, and they asked me if I wanted to join. I've never been to a Penguins game, and since it was a free ticket and will be hanging out with them I told them I would go. I texted my teacher friend back saying, "You might have left early, but I got tickets to the Pens game." She texts me back saying she was not impressed. I told her she'll get jealous and told her that my mission is to get her jealous by the end of the night. I know the perfect way.

The Consol Energy Center is known being the home of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and they hold very good concerts as well. What I'll be talking about how underrated their food concessions is. They have there standard food concessions that sell hot dogs, nachos, beer, and the like. However, the arena steps it up a notch by having some cool restaurant concessions like Primanti's, Burgatory, and Nakama. I decided to go with Nakama because I wanted to eat something light, and I wasn't really in the mood for anything too heavy.



I ended up ordering the Pittsburgh Penguins roll, which consisted of spicy tuna wrapped in soy paper and topped with fresh salmon and tempura flakes. At first I thought it was wrapped in some sort of wonton, but the soy paper is really soybean paper. If you want to know more about it, check this wikipedia link Mamenori(the actual name) It is sometimes used to replace nori, which is the common seaweed wrapper for sushi. I like that it had a bright yellow color, hence why it's call the Pittsburgh Penguins roll. The white tempura flakes gave the roll a nice balance in terms of color. I really liked the yellow, dark pink, and white color combination. As far as the taste goes, you can definitely feel the spice from the spicy tuna. Adding the salmon was a good idea because you can taste both the salmon and tuna at the same time. The flakes felt like it would be crunchy, but when you taste the flakes it was surprisingly tasted soft(at least that's my opinion). The only bad part about eating sushi was that you really need a table to eat sushi effectively. Eating sushi in the stands was a bit of a challenge and I even had soy sauce spilled on my jeans. Damn my clumsiness. I ended up taking a picture of my food and sent it to my teacher friend. She finally admitted to me that she was impressed and jealous. I won that round :).




As far as the Penguins game went, it was fun to watch in person. Hockey fans are a different kind of crowd compared to football fans. I had a sense that hockey fans are little bit more laid back than football fans. I've seen people in football games almost get heart attacks when the Steelers or Pitt Panthers are losing even if it's just by a point. At least in this hockey game, there was no sense of panic from the fans even when the Pens were down 4-1 at the middle of the third period. The Pens ended up tying the game at the end of the 3rd period and won the shootout. It was a great game and made my friend jealous. That's what I call a great Tuesday night.