Eye Candy: Sea Pearl

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed the break. Today we're back with a look at Sea Pearl in Falls Creek, Va.



STUDIOS Architecture is behind the design of the contemporary, casual-dining restaurant that's clearly inspired by its own name. The curtains here are made of lit Capiz shells and are handmade in the Phillipines.


Sea Pearl was opened by Ly Lai, one of the Lai sisters behind Four Sisters, a Vietnamese Restaurant also in Falls Creek.




The scattered light effects visible in the following picture are intended to evoke the image of light filtering down under the sea.


When the sardine begin the beguine, it's music to me...

Eye Candy: Vapiano

Vapiano is a German chain of Italian restaurants that's planning on expanding into the United States. This restaurant, located in Washington, D.C.'s Chinatown, is expected to open in December of this year.

Everything is better with monkeys and video

From the BBC: Two macaque monkeys named Yatchan and Fukuchan are waiting tables at this restaurant in Japan. They bring hot towels and drinks, and they get soy beans as tips.


Maybe this belongs on the HR page?

We've got dumps in the truck, truck, truck

Last week Bret alerted his Twitter followers to the news that Rickshaw Dumpling House had sent out a truck to sell dumplings to officeworkers all over New York. The next day it stopped by near the NRN offices, so I ran out to investigate.



I like the red paint job and retro-cute signage.

Here is the dumpling truck menu:


How do chalkboard menu-writers get the right mix of casual and legible? If I wrote a chalkboard menu, no one would be able to read it.

You could get chicken, pork or veggie dumplings. I was hoping for a pan-fried pork dumpling, but they only had steamed dumplings available. I got the pork ones. I would have been up for trying two of each to compare them, but you had to get 6 of a kind, and I was pretty sure I couldn't eat 18 dumplings for lunch. They were tasty, but my heart belongs to Rickshaw's chocolate soup dumplings. They're fantastic, chewy rice-dough balls with black sesame seeds and a molten chocolate center. That chocolate invariably squirts all over the place, so you have to be very cautious while eating them. Or you could throw caution to the wind and just wear a bib like any right-thinking grown-up.