Oh, where do I begin with this review? Amy, Anuja and I tried to go last Tuesday at 6:30pm and got promptly and kind of rudely turned away. The hostess informed us that they were no longer accepting names on the waitlist. WTF? At 6:30pm on a Tuesday?? I knew this place was hot and super buzzed about, but that was just infuriating. When we asked her what would be the best way to get on the waitlist, she said it was no longer possible and we should come around 4pm next time to put our names on the list. Umm, sorry but we have jobs and can't leave in the middle of the day to put our names on a sushi list. While I get it that they were booked and super popular, they really should find a way to better manage their operations and/or train their hostesses to deliver the news in a more palatable way.
So instead, we came back on Sunday at 11:30am for lunch. We thought we'd play it safe and come 30 mins before it opened and lo and behold, there were already 20 people in line when we got there. Craziness. Luckily, we were able to get a seat in the first seating. Unfortunately, Anuja spilled the entire bottle of soy sauce on herself when she sat down and not a single person came to help her. We had to flag multiple people down to get her napkins and no one got her any water or other things to take care of it. That was kind of disappointing and a sign of things to come.
The menu here is a smidge confusing - they have a bunch of set/omakase options up top (Trust Me, Trust Me Lite and the Nozawa) and then a handful of a la carte sushi options below. At first, we were going to split a Nozawa and then add a few rolls but the waiter told us that typically the sets entrees are for 1 person each, not to share. Um, ok, then that should have been made a bit clearer but I guess it made sense when you broke down how much was in each set. So we each got a Trust Me ($33) and then added the daily special of the large bay scallop sushi ($7 for 2 pieces). The Trust Me started with the edamame, which was your typical edamame served cold. It was followed by tuna sashimi which was fantastic fresh red tuna served with a bit of soy sauce and scallions on top. Excellent quality and this was starting to make me forget about the lukewarm service. Next came the albacore sushi and salmon sushi - both excellent. What makes their sushi fantastic isn't just the high quality of the fish but the rice was the perfect temperature and texture. Next came the yellowtail and halibut sushi - again both were melt in your mouth. The set ended with a toro hand roll and a crab hand roll. Both were warm and had the right ratio of rice to fish in it. I could have eaten 5 of those hand rolls. The bay scallop sushi was also amazing - a large raw scallop sitting perfectly on a bed of warm sushi rice. Yum!
And that was kind of the problem. After all of those pieces, we were still hungry! So we ordered the toro hand cut roll and the scallop roll. Both were very simple rolls - nothing more nothing less than high quality fish with a bit of rice and seaweed. I liked the simplicity of the rolls and it really highlighted the quality of the fish. On a service note, during this ordering process Anuja had asked for some hot tea and it never came. We finally flagged down a waitress and she said "oh, yeah we ran out of mugs. Sorry!" WTF?? how does a Japanese place run out of hot tea mugs an hour after they open?? And even so, it would have been nice of them to tell us that so that we were sitting around waiting for it.
At the end of the day the food was great - absolutely no complaints at all and for the price point, very very reasonable and delicious. Where they need to tightened things up is around service and logistics. There is just no way a restaurant is run optimally by turning people away at 6:30pm. Also the waitstaff, while very nice when you actually go their attention, needs to do a better job of actually providing quality hospitality to justify their no tipping policy. That being said, I would still definitely come back again when things have died down a bit. Total bill: $57/pp tip was included
Photo Credit: Yelp
No comments:
Post a Comment