Michael Y.
Yelp
I came in here for a walk-in dinner. and was rushed out in around 30 minutes.
It turns out, eating 12 pieces of sushi in 30 minutes is not a very enjoyable experience. You are stuffed, but not in a good way, and barely get to taste anything before you are told to leave. And when you leave the shop, you are borderline puking what you just ate.
Aside from that, our server told us there was Sake on the house. So we just went with that. But we weren't served Sake until 6 courses in (halfway), and we also had to explicitly ask the chef to pour for us. I understand they might be stingy about it, since it's "free alcohol," but don't lie to us about it being served after the appetizer, and it was very infuriating that they just stood around after we asked twice for it! I would have just done BYOB, and I suggest others to do that as well, if you want to drink something. The sake they serve is cheap, as expected, and has been open for a few days at least, but my main complaint is that they lied about when to serve it, and their lack of action to fix it.
Now, for the sushi. It is just ok. For $65, there are some pretty solid omakases out there, e.g. Shiki, or one of the "Omakase by ..." brands. What I thought of the sushi was:
- The quantity of fish is pretty generous. Thick cuts.
- Flavor is very, very bland. For the fattier cuts, this was a very big issue, because you would get an unpleasant fat taste, and not much else.
- There is an attempt to "elevate" the cuisine with fancy ingredients like truffle. But some of the pieces were not pleasant. E.g. scallop with the truffle salt + truffle was actually not tasty at all. I think just a classic lime + a flame char would be good. Or maybe just truffle salt and no truffle piece. But the truffle overwhelmed, the scallop didn't taste good, and there was no acidity for balance.
- On the topic of balance, there is definitely not enough wasabi for each piece, especially the fattier ones. I don't think I even noticed there was wasabi until I had a piece fall apart and I saw a slight green smear on the rice. But it is not very noticeable and made the pieces lose balance.
- The rice is extremely neutral, and I didn't taste any flavor. But this is ok, depending on style.
- Overall: too salty, too fatty (not in a good way). Not enough acidity, not enough wasabi. Some pieces were very very bland.
The only piece that was good to me was the eel, which was grilled and then unagi sauce was applied.
I understand the restaurant can get busy at times, so there is not much interaction with the chef, but the food was also just ok. I would suggest the restaurant find some more balance with their sushi, figure out something about the "sake on the house policy" instead of sour service, and not offer seating for people if they are going to be forced out in 30 minutes.