Happa: Excellent Japanese Teppanyaki in Phnom Penh

Happa
#17, Street 278
Phnom Penh
Tel: 077749266

I realized recently that the restaurants I eat at the most here in Phnom Penh are rarely the ones I review. Something about incredible familiarity makes me less likely to go ahead and haul the camera with me and do the review - so I'm glad I finally got around to Happa, a great little Japanese/Khmer teppanyaki joint on backpacker-beloved street 278.


Happa's pork stir-fried with sesame.

The menu focuses on Japanese small plates, prepared in front of you on the restaurant's big iron griddle, which makes for some rather interesting visuals and assurance that you're getting pretty fresh food. There's sauteed small plates of meats and vegetables, main-course dishes with steak, pork, and lamb, salads and fried specialities, and even Japanese pizza or "okonamayaki," a cabbage and flour pancake topped with bacon and cheese.



The teriyaki chicken here is excellent, nice and tender and not too salty, with some dark meat bits thrown in, which I infinitely prefer. I like to eat this with the oyster mushrooms sauteed in butter.



I'm also a big fan of the fresh tofu salad, which has soft tofu, seaweed, sesame and lettuce tossed in a vinegary-heavy dressing. A nice light stomach-friendly meal. My only complaint with Happa is that the cooks sometimes take too heavy a hand with the salt-shaker, but the issue seems to have been weeded out in the last month or two.



Vegetarians will enjoy Happa's turn with tofu - seems like there's fifteen different tofu based dishes on the menu, all using soft local tofu. The tofu steak with basil and chili is a Khmer-accented take and is pretty excellent - not TOO soft - served with Happa's griddle-fried potatoes (my boyfriend is an addict) and some sauteed vegetables. As far as main courses go, the pork cutlet topped with cheese and mushrooms, served with potatoes and veggies, is also excellent at $6.00.



Grilled Japanese eggplant is on special here sometimes. I can't say I find it too different from Khmer style grilled eggplant, other than perhaps the slightly sweet, slightly vinegary sauce on top, but it's still a good and distinctly smoky dish.

There's also a couple pages of classic Khmer dishes near the back if you're interesting in mixing your East Asian with your Southeast Asian. If you get there in time, Happa often has sushi rolls and sashimi featuring the fish of the day—comfortingly for those inclined to distrust raw fish in a third-world nation, they often run out.

The friendly wood-accented dining area is a casual spot to drink a beer or a glass of wine while waiting for your food - no one is attempting to hustle you out of the restaurant here, and its quiet location makes it possible to have a decent conversation here while enjoying some cooler dry season weather.

Happa's owners also play fantastic music, which is a real asset in a land where restaurant music trends more towards the ear-gratingly horrible. I hear New Orleans tracks I don't encounter outside of the Crescent city at Happa, as well as excellent Delta blues, jazz, and soul music. Someone with excellent taste in American music is obviously in charge of the audio here.

My dad notes many of his Japanese coworkers are rabid blues and jazz fans - Japanese readers, can you back this up?

Suzume: Homey Japanese Food in Dark Heart of Phnom Penh

Suzume
14A Street 51
092 748 393
Phnom Penh

Phnom Penh has more Japanese restaurants than I ever expected it to have, mostly due to the city's healthy (and apparently chronically starving) population of Japanese NGO workers. Most Japanese restaurants here are of the rustic variety, specializing more in curries, soups, ramen and gyoza, rather than more complicated and delicate affairs like sushi.

Expat-beloved and low-key Suzume, however, has a phone-book size menu with most standard Japanese dishes, including ramen and gyoza, a variety of tempura, and even a selection of sushi rolls.

Downside: everything is more expensive than it is at other "mid-range" Japanese places in town, including ramen at $7, which I think is a bit ridiculous in Cambodia. Bowl o' noodles, like everyone else eats here, just from Japan.



Edamame:possibly the perfect snack, tragically a bit hard to find here, or at least in the awesome pre-packaged microwave pack format you can find the stuff in Northern California. Buttery nutrient rich deliciousness, all natural, hard to object in any way.



Suzume does a pretty good turn in shrimp and vegetable tempura, which can be fried into a chewy, immense mass of suck and here is light and airy in the best Japanese fashion. Fried seaweed in batter is curiously delectable. I do not know how they turn shrimp into shrimp *poles* like this but it is rather impressive. Probably involves deveining, maybe crustacean torture, I don't know.



Vegetable gyoza are another classic - need to be light and not chewy, in the Japanese fashion (more leeway is allowed for big meaty greasy Chinese dumplings). These were filled with cabbage and chives and were quite tasty. I like the meaty variety more but one makes concessions when dining with vegetarians. (Hey, I love you guys. Cook for ya all the time. Well, used to.)



My boyfriend is sort of a Japanese curry obsessive and this is probably the most comforting of Japanese comfort foods to the expat set: mild curry, rice, and fried pork katsu on top. Great for cold weather (if we had any) and excellent if you're: 6'6, working on a construction site, or have recently suffered from a bout of weight-loss causing sickness. Since most foreigners here often experience #3, fire away. Japanese people: is this also Comfort Food of Choice? Suspect so for many.



Tuna rolls are a simple but delicious affair, and these use nice fish and are well-rolled, which is often an issue with sushi in Cambodia.

Admittedly: I spend my days at the Khmer Rouge War Tribunal of late and sometimes day-dream about asking the anti-materalist anti-Western Communist leaders of yore - "Hey, did you know bunches of expats dine on Japanese imperialist food at rather high prices in your very own capital? Suck on it!"

I will never get a chance to do this but it's kind of a dream.



My personal favorite: eel and cucumber rolls. These were quite good, and had a nice fresh, sweet, nicely unctuous flavor. Simple sushi rolls are something I miss very much from the US. Had I known I would miss Tulane University cafeteria sushi so much. In any case, these rolls fill the void in my heart, and there's no "service charge" like that surprise tacked on at Rahu. Tasty as Rahu's sushi may be.

Kaiko's Sushi: Back to Basics Japanese in Clearwater

Kaikos
2475 North McMullen Booth Road
Clearwater, FL 33759
(727) 791-6640

The sushi disease has infected Tampa, just as it has pretty much everywhere else, barring (perhaps) certain grasslands in Nebraska and the wilds of Upper Mongolia. There is a sushi restaurant on just about every corner, sushi at the grocery store, and sushi-making classes on offer at your nearest convenient library location. Most of this sushi is absolutely horrible. Thus, I'm happy to relate that Kaiko's Sushi in Clearwater is tasty, fresh, and suitable for human consumption. Back away from the Publix stuff. I mean it, you dirty little animal.

Kaiko's is what I'd call a traditional style sushi bar, Thank God. This means the rolls are

1. Small enough so that they can be fit in a standard-issue human mouth.

2. Not drenched in mayonnaise based sauce in wacky colors.

3. Put together with an eye towards fresh ingredients and the interplay of flavors, not with an eye toward "How much random shit can we stuff in this sushi roll for ten bucks? And how much sake do we have to sell to the pale-faces to get em' to eat it?"

All of these elements are Good. The menu is short and exists in the form of a piece of paper on which one marks off one's choices.



Sunonomo salad with seafood. Fresh and a good selection of fish - that's a plus here. Too much vinegar.



The Tampa roll. People in Tampa are nuts for fried grouper, totally nuts and thus this roll - fried grouper and onions, no more, no less. Too simple for me - grouper isn't exactly a hyperactively flavorful fish - but certain family members go nuts for it.



Ah, that's the stuff. I liked the 7-ingredient futomaki, which featured a whole bunch of crunchy vegetables, some preserved, and was very refreshing indeed. Also liked the simple unakyu with avocado and eel. The chopped conch special was all right, but not sure how I feel about the (thankfully not over the top) mayo mixture. Conch on its own is an interesting sort of flavor experience - not sure if that lily needs to be gilded. A very nice sashimi selection - these guys are sourcing and cutting their fish well. I can't stand sashimi that's been cut so thickly and so poorly that one needs a steak knife to get through it.


The two guys next to us were friendly in that older-guys hitting on you in a courtly fashion way to me and my cousin, and we shot the shit merrily throughout dinner. It's a convivial place, and the older guy manning the sushi bar is funny as hell, berating a regular who identified himself as "crazy, just crazy." (Not in my eyes: a lot of middle aged guys trying to seem wacky have this habit of identifying themselves as Crazy, as if I will leap back all astonished and horrified but at the same time aroused. I have (I think) looked into the Eye of Crazy on a couple occasions on my life and you sir, wacky as you may be, do not qualify as bona-fide crazy. That is darker and much more complex. Such things do not need to be discussed over austere and good sushi somewhere in the depths of Clearwater.

I have forgotten where I was going with this.

I recommend Kaiko for back-to-basics sushi in the Clearwater area.

Kru: Fancy Sushi in Midtown Sacramento

Kru
2516 J Street
Sacramento, CA 95816
(916) 551-1559

Kru is Midtown Sacramento's nouveau sushi restaurant, specializing in preparations and ingredients beyond Mikuni's mayo-drenched norm. The hip and small place attracts an equal contingent of hip people(excluding me) : a quirky wine list and a small-plates centric menu complete Kru's aura of studied difference. So what about the food?



This is the baby calamari salad ($10), a texturally interesting combination of sliced cucumber, green apple,
micro-greens, and creamy miso dressing. The flash-fried little squids were a nicely chewy warm juxtaposition to the crunchy and slightly sweet cucumber and apple, and the miso-sauce was a good tie together. A successful (and attractive) dish.



This is a rather unusual seaweed salad, composed of different varieties of seaweed and served with a spicy wasabi dressing and a little bit of quail egg. If you're one of those people who are into the gelatinous and salty side of Japanese cuisine, you'll like this. (I do).



The always-popular hamachi kama ($11), a charbroiled yellowtail collar, typically served with a dish of ponzu sauce. This is one of the simplest dishes on Kru's playlist and one of my favorites: the fatty and super-flavorful meat, when combined with the grill's char and the snappy citrus sauce, is just delicious. This was a very nice rendition of this classic, and one of the best I've had in the area. Two snaps up. (Another advantage of hamachi kama is that some people will find it icky and refuse to eat it, leaving more for you!)



This is panko crusted salmon sashimi, served with a crab remoulade ($14). I have always been suspicious of fried salmon, as the combination of deep fat fryin' and salmon's inherent richness seemed to be totally overwhelming. Thankfully, this suceeded the trick seems to be keeping the fish inside uber-rare with just a slight panko-crunch on the outside. The creamy remoulade didn't possess the horse-radish kick I was expecting (being a remoulade snob and part-time New Orleanian, yeah, bitches, I like my remoulade good n' proper.)



This is Kru's signature Poke trio - hawaiian style marinated spicy tuna, hamachi, and octopus, with green tea, schichimi, and nori salts ($13). The dish is pretty as hell and plays well off the oft-abused three ways concept - Poke is one of Hawaii's most divinely inspired treats, and this was a good rendition of a classic, with super fresh fish and a good flavor profile. The schmancy salts sound compelling, but I honestly can't detect much flavor difference between the three varieties. Pretend you can tell the difference to impress the hell out of your date.



This is the Tesla roll, which has soft shell crab, avocado, albacore, salmon, garlic cream sauce, and chives ($12). I'm always a sucker for soft shell crab, so this was pretty good, although I am increasingly over Sacramento style rolls of "fried stuff with cream sauce on top. If you are into that (most are), this definitely knocks the socks off of Mikuni.


Kru does a very good job of getting high quality and super fresh fish. That can be a real problem in Sacramento's more half-assed sushi joints. My hat is off.

Service was not up to Kru's usual standards. Our server was rather scattered, and our attempts to order two different bottles of wine were unsuccessful. "Sorry, we're redoing our wine list," was the explanation. Folks, take the wine off the menu if it is not available, do not cruelly lure us in then dash our hopes. To put a completely over-dramatic spin on it.

Despite some small hiccups, Kru is my favorite sushi joint in Sacramento. The quiet and stylish dining room, the innovative menu items, and the super fresh fish combined to produce a superior experience to the other Ye Olde Sushi Huts that proliferate in Sactown. They'll have my business for a long time to come.

Hana: Sushi with a Side of Meh

Hana Sushi
8116 Hampson St
New Orleans, LA 70118
(504) 865-1634

Hana is your classic College Sushi joint, the sort of place where freshmen on dates, graduate students on budgets, and the general public who just don't know any better end up. The menu is comprised of classic entry level standbys: shrimp tempura, chicken teriyaki, gyoza, egg rolls, udon noodles, and so on and so forth. Most Hana goers roll with one of the economical and ginormous rolls or sushi plates and don't much bother how things actually taste.



On this visit, I tried the sunonomo salad. Gigantic, vinegary, and served with faux crab. Not bad but it's not exactly a difficult dish to nail.



The No Name role looks kinda like a surrealist painting, don't it? This riceless soy bean paper roll was interesting concept but inferior in execution. There were tiny tiny bits of unagi and salmon amid a humongo amount of mayo drenched faux crab. Admittedly this is what keeps prices down. I hate being poor.

Sad to say, Hana has consistently disappointed me. The first time I visited, I had a tremendous and overwhelming salmon and mango roll that seemed to comprise an entire unfortunate fish, a boatload of mayo, and some stone-cold chopped up tempura. The supposedly "famous" noodle salad seems to be composed of glass noodles and vaguely sesame flavored mayo - the kind of thing most college kids will scarf up and I, bourgeoise princess that I am, will regard with a raised and incredulous eyebrow. The one bright spot was the seaweed salad: tasty as it oughta be and served in a startlingly large portion. Then again it is rather difficult to screw up seaweed salad.

Hana is best suited for poor college kids and even poorer graduate students, and should be avoided otherwise. Unless all you really want is a big ol' bowl of seaweed salad.

Three Monkeys: Kitchen-Sink Menu, Tasty Sushi

Three Monkeys
723 K St
Sacramento, CA 95814
(916) 441-4860


Three Monkeys, yet another attempt to make K Street Mall slightly less gungy, was all the rage a few months ago, attracting big old crowds to indulge in a highly eclectic menu. The crowds are gone months onward, but does the food hold up?

Set in a rather conventional (but pleasant) space, Three Monkeys reminds me of your standard Western brewpub space, with a big open bar and whismical paintings of the Sacramento Delta on the wall. Unlike your average brewpub, Three Monkeys features an inconogorous sushi bar smack dab in the middle of it with sake signs plastered all over it. Therein we find Three Monkeys gimmick: Brew-pub American food (pulled pork slides, fried chicken tenders, burgers, salads) juxtaposed with freshly cut sushi and other Asian and Mexican specialties all one one rather thick menu.

Since me and my dining companions (hi kevin!!) were experincing a dangerous sushi jones, we stuck to that portion of the menu. The sliders looked good from a distance if that's worth anything to you.



We began with the tuna poke salad, served with sweet onions and fried lotus chips. This was a tasty version, and I was impressd with the freshness of the fish - the lotus chips were an interesting and crunchy alternate to potato chips. (I also like how they knid of look like alien life forms.)



We also sampled the tropical salmon - raw salmon stuffed with crab and served with tropical salsa. This sounds foofoo but was actually rather delicous, again featuring commendably fresh fish - even the martini glass presentation was rather adorable.



We moved on to unagi nigiri and the chef's special salmon belly. The unagi was as tasty a version as I've had other places, but the salmon belly stood out: quickly seared and topped with a bit of vinegared onion, it was a delicious and fatty little tidbit.

Next up was the K Street Roll - filled with fried soft shell crab, avocado, crab salad, and wrapped with salmon. This was not exactly revolutionary sushi but it was fresh, skillfully made and quite tasty, and I deeply appreciated that the crab was freshly fried instead of fished out of some box after being fried roughly 2.5 years ago. Props.



Round four: Asian lettuce wraps (hello, P.F Changs) with ground chicken and mushroom, along with a Korean-ish dipping sauce, served over cellophane noodles. This was a perfectly serviceable version of that Chinese Food For Frightened White People genre, and I did enjoy it, especiallly the pickled vegetables on the side.

We ended with hamachi kama, that delicious dish composed of grilled fish collar with ponzu, broiled under a very hot flame. Three Monkeys seems to be sourcing some rather tasty fish, and this took a while to cook but came out excellent: lots of fresh and flavorful meat with a nice crispy fish-skin crust. (Do not order hamachi kama if you averse to picking around bones and kind of looking like a horrible animal.)

Three Monkeys is doing a surprisingly good job on its sushi component, although the non-Japanese aspects of the menu have yet to be tested - at least by me. Certainly it's a good option to keep in mind if you're in downtown Sacramento and find yourself in the midst of one of those annoying ass social groups where everyone wants something different because they are just that special.

Tokyo Fro's: Disco Sushi

Tokyo Fro's
2224 Fair Oaks Blvd
Sacramento, CA 95825
(916) 648-1115




Tokyo Fro's has been around for a while. I remember when it first opened: my family ran over there immediately, memories of a Disco Sushi place we used to frequent while living in Atlanta running through our heads. The place didn't disappoint in that regard: thumping disco music and funky paintings filled the space and young, attractive sushi chefs sliced and diced fish at the wide open sushi bar, while rail thin CSUS students picked at decent rolls and enjoyed Happy Hour.

I hadn't been in a few years, but we revisited the other night. Has it changed any?

The music is still loud, but Tokyo Fro's definitely seemed to be seeing less business then it did in the old days. The menu is your standard Americanized/Fusion Sushi sort of bidness, with a lot of bizarre rolls and other vaguely Japanese and Asian inflected dishes. Almost all menu items have cutesy little nick-names, which is kind of fun if you're drunk but embarrassing to say when you are both stone sober and with your parents.

We began with the wakame seaweed salad (6.50), which was essentially the same as you'd get anywhere else: tangy, crispy, and salty. I insisted on ordering the Kama Sutra (pictured above) (6.95), which was a grilled hamachi collar in ponzu sauce over a bed of daikon. This was actually very good, and I enjoyed picking the meat out of the fish's elaborate bone structure, while swirling it in the tangy citrus sauce that covered the plate. For god's sake though, don't order this if you have any issue whatsoever with fish bones. For the rest of us: it's like pig picking Japanese style.

We also ordered a couple of rolls. The rolls here are totally overwrought, stuffed with ingredients, drenched in sauce and generally way too big to eat in one bite - but if you're into Wacky Explosions of Fish (and let's be honest, most people are,) Tokyo Fro's has some options for you. If you're into austere, simple rolls that are healthy, normal sized, and evocative of actual Japanese cuisine....uh, good luck.



We went with the Passion of Rice (13.50), which had tempura prawns, avocado, and spicy tuna on the inside, topped with salmon, jalapeno, and garlic miso sauce, then torched. This was pretty good, and I liked the spicy kick of the jalapeno - though again, why does everything have to be drenched in some kind of squeeze bottle sauce?

We also tried the Captain Save-A-Fro (13.95), with spicy tuna and asparagus on the inside and hamachi, avocado, maguro, shitake mushrooms, and the ubiquitous miso sauce on the outside. The roll itself was rather ginormous for my tastes (though the aspragus was a fun touch), but the shitakes were absolutely delicious, with a garlic butter sort of flavor. It wasn't Asian, but it was tasty - I wish they offered these mushrooms as a side order.

We also tried a simple 12 piece sashimi platter (20.95), which was simply okay - featuring only hamachi, salmon, and maguro, rather then the more interesting variety you usually get with samplers. The fish itself seemed fresh and tasted good, but the pieces were gigantic and cut with an obviously heavy hand. I like sashimi in manageable pieces. Anything bigger and I feel more like a vicious raw meat consuming predator then a customer in an ostensibly civilized restaurant.



Still hungry, I ordered the Hawaiian Poke (8.95). The presentation was lovely: the chunks of tuna were layered with the seaweed and onion in a martini glass, along with slices of avocado on top. The spicy soy sauce it was tossed with was light and not overpowering - I really enjoyed this dish.



Service was fairly quick and certainly friendly, although our waitress did seem a bit overattentive. The noise level here is very loud, and you should by no means expect to come here and have a relaxing Japanese cuisine experience - you'll end up shouting at each other over the table as college students take sake shots instead.

So is Tokyo Fro's worth a visit? The place certainly lacks the luster it had when it first opened up, but the very untraditional sushi is still a decent option if you have no convictions about how Japanese food *should* taste. If you're a roll person or simply enjoy spicy mayo sauce drizzled over everything, you'll like Tokyo Fro's. (And the poke is definitely a safe bet if you're only willing to commit to a bar snack or two.) Try a few things off the menu, have some drinks, and try to relax - if you can get past the whole thumping party music thing.

Shiro Sushi And Hibachi: With A Side of Pedestrian

Shiro Sushi and Hibachi
105 Stockbridge Rd
Great Barrington, MA 01230
(413) 528-1898

Great Barrington has a lot of sushi restaurants. This has always mystified me because as far as I can tell, we are very far away from the ocean indeed. The only conclusion I can make: the Yuppie Factor. Great Barrington has many yuppies, and they all, apparently, enjoy eating raw fish and feeling vaguely adventurous.

So what of Shiro, the Other Japanese Restaurant, playing second fiddle to Bizen?

Shiro is located near The Cove bowling alley and the impressive asian art store, in a rather Denny's-esque building. The interior, however, is quite attractive, and I enjoyed the relaxing ambience the owners have created. I was quickly seated - not an issue, as the place was rather empty at 5:30 on a Saturday.



Shiro offers hibachi along Benihana lines, which means you get to sit at a grill and watch a chef flip shrimp around while handling a distressingly huge knife. Since I was dining alone, I didn't get this.

The menu features your standard Americanize Japanese entrees - teriyaki, udon, tempura, katsu, you know the drill. There's also a variety of sushi rolls and a few reasonably priced lunch entrees, which is one definite advantage over the inflated prices Bizen posts. I wasn't feeling the sushi that night, but I did, however, have an unstoppable desire for seaweed salad ($4.95) and teriyaki salmon ($16.95.)

The salmon came with a rather weak miso soup and the typical half-ass Japanese restaurant salad, although the carrot dressing was pretty good - too bad the shredded greens were boring. The seaweed salad appeared promptly and was a standard but tasty rendition, with the satisfying aqua crunch I've come to associate with the dish. The Diet Coke I ordered arrived in a charming tiny glass bottle, which I rarely see in the USA.



The salmon arrived on a huge and intimidatingly hot platter, served on a bed of onions and rather depressed looking bean sprouts. I also received about two broccoli, and immediately wished for more, as I am a totally unrepentant Broccoli Whore and would happily eat my weight in it. The fish? Eh...not bad. It was a bit overcooked, but the sauce wasn't insipidly sweet or overdone, and I enjoyed the addition of the crunchy, caramelized onions. (But why are they so stingy on the damn vegetables?) Bizen's teriyaki fish? Much better.



Is Shiro a good alternative to Bizen? Maybe. It's much more of a family atmosphere and the prices are lower - but it lacks the cool feeling and the adventurous menu choices that Bizen executes so well. However, if all you want is some simple Japanese food in the area without breaking the bank, Shiro is a decent choice. But is it worth going to for an event, special occasion, or simply for the sake of culinary exploration? No.

Bizen: Good Sushi in the Berkshires? What?!?

Bizen Sushi Bar & Japanese Restaurant
17 Railroad St
Great Barrington, MA 01230-1577
Phone: (413) 528-4343





Decent sushi in the extremely landlocked Berkshires is suprising, but there you have it - (I can hear the Locavores screaming from here.)

Bizen delivers a nice product in a lovely space, complete with a vast menu and some truly interesting riffs on your standard sushi rolls. It's definitely not *that* traditional, but I've had some really exciting meals here. There's a certain crunchy eird" stuff, ranging from Japanese bar foods to funky rolls to a good selection of raw oysters. Nothing here is cheap, however, so be prepared for the accompanying wallet hit. What are you expecting anyway? The Berkshires are a giant money pit.


I like the Afghanistan Roll, featuring a somewhat pedestrian crab and avocado roll covered in a crazy-good spicy sauce with chunks of real meaty lobster. This is thrown in the oven and baked for a bit and it comes out as some sort of perverse spicy sushi casserole - did I detect hints of curry? You must try this.



Next was a tasty fried scallop roll, featuring scallions and a bit of avocado. The rolls were a bit large, but impeccably made and very tender - this rice hasn't been sitting around. I also tucked into the Kiss My Bass (cute), rolling chunky and tender fried sea bass in with your standard issue avocado and cucumber. Fresh and tasty.

Finally, we ordered the Pearl Harbor, which was simply bizarre. A roll composed of soba noodles, smoked tofu, and veggies is deep fried into UFO like lumps and tossed in a pan of tempura sauce. It was tremendous, kind of scary looking, and probably bad for you, but I ate it anyway. I'm still collecting my thoughts. Order it if you want to be both kind of disturbed and highly satiated.



I also tried some of the sashimi deluxe dinner ($21.75), which included tuna, yellowtail, salmon, sunshine bass, and octopus. The fish was expertly sliced and very fresh, served on the standard bed of daikon. It's a good simple choice if you're not into all that rice.

On other occasions, I've tried their excellent fried lotus root - the starchy and slightly sweet nature of the lotus set off well by the light tempura batter. They also do a serviceable spicy tuna roll. The tuna on a bed of pureed sweet yam is bizarre and glutinous, which is not exactly a testimony...but I presume it's really, really traditional.

The teriyaki broiled Chilean sea-bass is absolutely delicious and comes in a caveman sized portion, which is fine, since you will by no means wants to share. I loved the thick, charbroiled meat and even the tasty and chunky side of vegetables that came with it.




A big old hijiki salad ($6.95) wasn't really what I was expecting, coming on a bed of spring mix, but the seaweed was pretty tasty and had an interesting nutty flavor. The portion size was also huge: I guess they're trying to justify the premium prices they charge. The dressing is made with some sort of avocado variant and has an interesing pesto-ish flavor, but they went too heavy on the olive oil.



Service is the weak link here. The servers are young, inexperienced, and a bit foggy regarding the ins-and-outs of the menu. It's definitely not the service I'm expecting when I'm paying highway robbery prices. The time you'll wait can be maddeningly variable as well: they can be quick and efficient, but they go through weird droughts where the guy manning the sushi bar works at glacial speed...extra irritating to this Californian used to blindingly fast (and good) knife work.

I do want to give them accolades for allowing us to stay quite a bit past closing time the other evening - we were waiting for someone to show up who got held up at the airport. They were very understanding, and allowed us to get in an order before the kitchen closed for the evening for the missing person. Props.