Samurai Visited 1/14/11 3 Forks

Samurai 149 N 6th St, (between Bedford Ave & Berry St), Brooklyn, NY 11211

 I've been to Samurai a few times before and it's nothing really amazing but not terrible either.  It's in a 1 block radius of 2 other neighborhood sushi joints on Bedford (Mizu and Miyako) and I'm usually pretty indifferent between the 3.  I will say that this one probably has the least appealing decor but that's ok.  It's a pretty low key joint that offers a fairly decent menu.  The one plus that this place has that the others don't is that they offer a sweet potato tempura appetizer ($5).  Now for me, besides the shrimp, the sweet potato is the best kind of tempura and this actually the only sushi place, fancy or not, that offers a sweet potato only tempura option.  

They don't have a spicy dinner combo which I usually like to get in these types of places, but we did order a few other special rolls that were surprisingly filling.  We got a basic yellow tail scallion roll ($5.50), a sunrise roll which had spicy crab meat, cucumber, and topped with blackpepper salmon ($10), and a dancing scallop roll which had spicy scallop, crabmeat, scallion and topped with crunch ($10).  They were all pretty decent sized and came in 8 pieces and while in the past I could have eaten all three rolls myself, I was pretty full from splitting these rolls with Dan.  While I like crunch on my sushi, there was too much crunch on the dancing scallop roll, it was literally covering the entire roll to the point where it soaked up all the soy sauce and made it thick and hard to deal with. 

In the end the total bill with a small bottle of unfiltered sake ($13) was $47 without tip.  It's a decent neighborhood joint but it's definitely not for those wanting a fancy experience.