Woah, I was completely caught off guard by this place. I had read about Tanoshi in several blogs as being one of the top omakase in the cities despite not being incredibly fancy. In fact, this place is the complete opposite of high end fancy pants sushi places. It's pretty much a tiny hole in the wall far off on the East Side. I would have never found out about this place on my own. However, similar to Sushi Nakazawa, it's incredibly difficult to secure a reservation. It used to be that you had to physically stop by the restaurant and put your name on a clipboard outside the restaurant to secure a slot. But now they've upgraded to the 21st century and you can go online to make a reservation although I will say that you'll probably have to click through several dates to find an opening.
Luckily I was able to secure 2 seats on a random Tuesday night at 6pm. They only have 3 time slots for the evening, so you better be on time or close to being on time. When you walk in, you'll notice that there are only 10-12 seats and it's all at the sushi bar - which I love. While it's omakase style they do have a wall that lists out separate appetizers that you can order individually. We decided to start with the scallop sashimi ($12) because I'm obsessed with anything scallop related. It comes out thinly sliced and it was heavenly. Not super buttery but very very smooth, sweet and silky. Then the omakase started. The first piece was fluke - and they mention on the wall that all the sushi is served room temperature and with loose rice. It was fantastic and served totally traditional style with no soy sauce and very little wasabi. The quality of the fish was amazing and the rice was indeed loose and had the right touch of vinegar to it. This first bite made me super excited for what was to come. I'll spare you painful details of me and Janet swooning and tearing up over every single piece we ate but they were all mind blowing and it really puts into perspective what is high quality sushi and what is just ok sushi. The meal continued on with red snapper, wild king salmon, marinated big eye tuna, squid, albacore tuna, poached scallop, salmon roe, sea urchin with a raw quail egg, eel, then a trio of big eye tuna, king salmon and albacore tuna rolls, a small cup of miso soup and then the meal ended with a large delicious spicy tuna hand roll. Everything was amazing and completely 5 fork worthy. My favorite was obviously the sea urchin - just incredibly creamy and silky. I could have eaten 5 more of those and then some. Even thought it was a lot of food, we decided that we still wanted to try one more appetizer so we opted for the king salmon carpaccio ($15) which was about 6 thin slices of slightly seared king salmon with yozu sauce on it. Again, it was simply delightful and perfect.
Despite its awful location, this place is a genuine gem. While I loved Sushi Nakazawa, this place is definitely much more my speed in terms of it just being much more low key and informal. PLUS the best part of it all? It's only $60 per person. Yes it's half the price of Sushi Nakazawa. It's got to be one of the best deals ever for sushi in terms of quality and variety. Another huge plus is that it's BYOB, so definitely bring your own wine or sake before heading over. I truly loved every minute of my meal here and I hope it stays under the radar for a while, although I doubt that will happen. Total bill: $100/pp with tax and tip
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