Wei West Visited 10/19/2012 3 Forks

Wei West 235 Murray St., New York, NY 10282

The only reason a place like Wei West ends up on my blog is because of its convenient location to my office.  Before Goldman moved in, there was only PJ Clarke's, the Grill Room and Southwest as the only sit down options and frankly they're (or were - both the Grill Room and Southwest have closed) all pretty sub-par. Now there's Harry's Italian, Blue Smoke, North End Grill and Wei West which aren't amazing restaurants either but they're at least a notch above those options.  Allison and I went to Wei West for lunch on a Friday afternoon and I was surprised at how crowded it was.  But they do a good job of understanding the business lunch crowd by getting you your food  and bill quickly.  The big problem with places like PJ Clarke's or North End Grill is that they take FOREVER to get you your food and in an area where most lunch time goers only have an hour or 1 1/2 hours tops, it's really important to be able to get people in and out in time for their 1pm meetings.

Wei West has a nice variety of lunch box specials.  They are a bit pricey for what they offer but every now and then I'm willing to spend $20 for a decent lunch.  I got the sashimi bento box ($16.50) which came with soup, 3 dumplings, a small serving of fried rice, a California roll, and 6 small cuts of sashimi.  The food came out in about 10 minutes which was nice because it enabled us to eat our food at a normal pace and not have to worry about shoveling our food in 5 minutes so that we can rush back to the office.  The miso soup was your basic soup, nothing to write home about.  The dumplings were also fine, although the skin was a bit thicker than I like and they clearly weren't freshly made, but hey, that's not what I was expecting here.  The fried rice was made with a bit too much soy sauce but the serving size was about 5-6 bites, so it was bearable but if you ordered the fried rice as your entree, it might have been too salty.  The California roll was actually pretty good and nicely made without too much rice wrapped on the outside.  California rolls aren't my favorite type of rolls (I think they are a cop out roll) but it was a nice addition to the bento box.  What was most surprising was the sashimi.  You know, it was actually pretty good.  I wasn't expecting much but it was very fresh tasting.  The tuna was very red and not that greyish or pinkish looking color that you sometimes see with lower end sushi places.  I really enjoyed the sashimi and wished that the cuts were bigger.  For $16.50, I would have rather had more or bigger pieces of sashimi and not had the fried rice or even the dumplings.  Allison got the 2 rolls lunch special which was choice of any 2 rolls and 1 soup for $12.95.  The rolls looked well made and better quality than the rolls in the cafeteria but it seems a bit pricey for just 2 small rolls.

Wei West is a nice alternative to the every day cafeteria options or the boring Cosi type sandwiches.  It's definitely not a destination restaurant nor would I ever go outside of work or happy hour.   Plus it's a wee bit overpriced but I'm still glad that it's there to satisfy my sushi/Asian food needs near work.  Total bill: $33 total for 2 with tax

Photo Credit: Yelp