Sushi Damo Visited 9/1/2012 3 Forks

Sushi Damo 36-G Maryland Ave., Rockville, MD 20850

Every time I come home to Rockville/Bethesda, I am always amazed at how much has changed.  Growing up, there were no super fancy restaurants and definitely no trendy sushi places.  But now in the Rockville Town Center, there are tons of restaurants such a sports bar/breweries, Thai, Middle Eastern, Spanish and fancy pants sushi.  Sushi Damo reminds me of a few sushi places in New York that have hip decor but overpriced ok food inside.  The decor here is large and cavernous with sleek paintings and lighting.  But because this is Rockville, the clientele is still a bit suburban.  

The menu is pretty extensive and about $5 more than it should be for Maryland.  The specialty rolls were all north of $14, which to me is pretty ridiculous.  Plus I'm not a huge fan of places that have special rolls that just try to cram in everything but the kitchen sink in them.  Who wants to have a sushi roll that has strawberry sauce and mint or a roll topped with corn flakes? I mean, I completely appreciate places that try to be creative and different but sometimes when it comes to sushi, less is more.  I wasn't really in the mood to drop $30+ on dinner (contemplated getting the sashimi or chirashi but both were almost $30 each) , so I settled for the boring Spicy Roll Combo ($17) which came with spicy tuna, spicy salmon and spicy yellowtail and a salad.  Jeana and I split an order of edamame ($5) to start.  I usually bitch about how an entire bag of edamame for $2 but at least here, they do almost give you an entire bags worth of edamame for your money.  It was so much that it took us almost the entire dinner to finish the order.  The salad that came with the combo was fine, your usual Japanese side salad with mixed greens and ginger dressing.  Although I would have liked for them to mix the vegetables up some more, since it looked like they plunked down the mixed greens on one side of the plate, some chopped cucumber on the other side of the plate and then cherry tomatoes on the bottom corner.  The actual roll combo itself was totally fine, nothing special.  I usually prefer the spicy rolls that have the larger chunks of fish in the roll and then topped with a spicy mayo, but these spicy rolls were the kind that were chopped up fish mixture with no spicy mayo.  There were about 6 rolls of each kind, so after 18 rolls total, I was pretty full.  For $17, this was totally a fine meal but I wasn't wow'd over by the quality of the rolls.  If I had closed my eyes, I probably wouldn't really be able to decipher which roll was which.  But I did appreciate that there wasn't a ton of rice on the outside of the roll.  I hate places that serve rolls with almost a pound of rice on the outside to the point where you can't taste the fish.  All in all, it's nice that there is a place like this nearby and it's not so wildly expensive that you couldn't afford it every once and a while.  But I still prefer Tachibana in Virgina for my hometown sushi visits.  The quality there is amazing and much more affordable.  Total bill: $53 with tax and tip

Photo Credit: Yelp