So it's surprising that a high end place would open on this street. It's actually pretty easy to miss the entrance as there is really no sign except for a small door with the name discretely written in black on it. When I walked inside, I started to feel a bit out of place. Even though I had come from work and was in work attire, it just seemed a bit too upscale for me. But the waitstaff was super nice and let me sit down before Nancy and Nils arrived. We had gotten a seat at the bar which was great and I could immediately tell that the quality of the food would be top notch and high end.
While I don't regret not ordering the omakase, in hindsight, I do think it would have been the better experience. It was just hard to justify spending $95 on a random Monday night outing. Instead, we chose to order a la carte. The waiter suggested 3-5 small plates and then a few rolls. We ordered the Neta Spicy Salmon ($13) and the King Mushrooms ($9), toro and scallion roll ($28, yes that's $28 for 1 roll), Kanpachi & Spicy Potato roll ($10), Unagi Cucumber roll ($11), Dungeness Crab Avocado roll ($15), and the soft shell crab roll ($15). The King Mushroom came out first and it was 4-5 thinly sliced pieces of mushroom served with spicy pomme frites (which were like fried potato shavings) and serrano peppers. It was good but I wasn't getting a whole lot of flavor to it besides the spiciness of the potato and peppers. King mushrooms are a favorite of mine mainly for their firm texture and there just wasn't enough mushroom to go around to really get a sense of that. Next came the spicy salmon which was nothing how I imaged it. First of all, it came out sizzling hot plate with the crispy rice still crackling on the bottom and salmon on top of the rice and then topped with bonito flakes. It was an interesting concept, but I didn't really taste much besides the rice. There need to be more salmon to make it really stand out.
Next came the rolls and in true high class style, they don't give you any wasabi and only a very limited supply of very light soy sauce. All the rolls here were definitely light on the rice and cut very small (almost bite sized). The toro roll was my first glimpse of actual raw fish here and I must say the toro was amazing. It just melted in your mouth and the seaweed that it was wrapped in was so thin and not over powering. I was a bit disappointed to only see 4 pieces. For $28, I expected more pieces. The unagi cucumber, soft shell crab roll, and kanpachi roll were ok...I didn't feel wow'd by them. I generally don't order rolls that don't have raw fish in them or I usually steer away from rolls that have a fried component to it because it usually takes over the flavor, but the waiter did suggest several of these, so we thought they were worth ordering. The pieces were just cut too small to really get a true sense of the high quality ingredients. I know authentic sushi is not supposed to be these giant, monster sized pieces you see at Yama or in other places, but I need something of substance to get my palate going. I did enjoy the dungeness crab avocado roll as the crab meat was very fresh and prominent in the roll, but when I think about it, it was really a very high quality California roll. All in all, I did truly appreciate the food here, I just think we should have stuck with more of the raw fish dishes. As I watched the sushi chefs cut mouth watering pieces of salmon, yellowtail and tuna right in front of me, I wished that I had ponied up for the omakase (although I'm sure I would have financially regretted it later on). The up side is that all this sharing made eating here pretty affordable. Total bill: $43/pp with tax and tip.
Photo Credit: Eater.com
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