I'm not eating sushi again for a long long time :( [warning: food porn inside, don't come hungry]
Ever eat at a restaurant that was so good that it ruined that cuisine for you? You know, like that first time you had a real hamburger and decided to swear off McDonalds, well at least until the next time you were hungry, had 5 minutes for lunch and 99 cents in your pocket :)
Now, I must admit, I've had sushi this good before. The first time was when Morimoto made it for me at Nobu years ago. The second was at one of the Jiro locations in Tokyo (one of these is the place Anthony Bourdain eats at in the Tokyo episode of No Reservations). Neither of those places ruined sushi for me for one main reason: I accepted that these meals were hella expensive once or twice in a blue moon experiences only available in what one would term a global cosmopolitan city.
Well, I certainly did not expect that a sushi chef that good would set up shop in a far north suburb of Sacramento. Or that he would charge 1/3-1/5 what I was paying at the other places this good.
The first time I went with Jody and Sushi Girlfriend (our coworker that tags along with us for sushi every weekend). We decided to try the place on the strength of reviews on Yelp. Almost everyone was giving this place five stars and almost pleading for everyone in the area to stop patronizing the overpriced, oversauced crappy sushi places in the area to go to this place. Any place that gets Yelpers that excited gets me excited.
This was our first lunch there:
The plate in the front is their 8 dollar lunch special. I don't know why I ordered it, but I suspect I just wanted to see how good their regular sushi was. Even that plate was phenomenal.
For the rolls in the background, the left was a rainbow roll and the right was a dragon roll. Standard California sushi offerings, but made with very very fresh fish. Oh, and did I mention the sushi rice? Instead of that candied tasting crap everyone else makes, Dave (the sushi chef) actually makes it the traditional way, making a separate seasoning mixture with vinegar, kombu and "other secret ingredients" before combining it. I could just eat rice there and be happy.
The roll in the middle was the result of my order of "tell him to make me a roll... whatever he wants, I don't care". This roll was salmon belly wrapped in nori, then rice, then white tuna, then yellow tuna, then covered in a dijon sauce he made (yeah this threw me for a loop when he told me what it was, but it was very good) and then... candied walnuts. It was crazy. But it worked. We swore to not eat sushi anywhere else as long as he was here. We couldn't figure out what the hell he was doing in a strip mall in this part of the world, but we were happy that Dave the sushi chef at some point in the past had a moment of insanity and decided to set up shop here.
A few days later we had some layoffs at work and decided after a day that rough that we wanted to go back. We somehow dragged ourselves to the sushi bar and with our remaining energy asked Dave to "omakase" us, or in English, "make whatever the F you want and keep it coming until we ask you to stop."
He took us up on that...
Cucumber rolls. That's what he called it. As you can see in the picture title, he decided to add some phenomenal things to it. The last time I had monkfish liver was when Morimoto served it to me. This roll blew my mind.
We probably spent an hour there eating various things. He had some fresh oysters and some great soft shell crab that he turned into a hand roll. And then there was our "sushi mini bites platter"
...which was awesome. Oh yeah, and a whole platter of bigeye tuna sashimi because he overheard Jody talking about how much she liked the tuna.
Over the next couple weeks we went back for lunch a few times, each time having phenomenal sushi. On one visit, Jody asked for octopus. He had Moroccan octopus in stock, which is seriously unlike any octopus I've ever had (and much better). During one lunch, we saw him manically putting together some crazy looking dish. Then he handed it to Jody:
This was some crazed concoction of tuna tartare, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, greens, tobikko and gold leaf. It tasted even better than it looks. Oh, and remember how I mentioned this guy was charging crazy low prices for this stuff. This plate ran us 11 dollars. Seriously.
During the meal Dave mentioned that he was probably going to have to close in January, as business was declining because of the economy and that while he didn't want to sound arrogant, it was sort of fruitless for him to hang out in a small area while barely breaking even.
So fast forward to last night, and I'm drifting away into a very needed nap when my email bell goes off. It's a guy from Yelp telling me that Dave announced he was closing this Wednesday. Really, like 5 days away. I freaked out and went with Jody to his restaurant. sure enough, he had given up on his location and stopped ordering supplies. He was going to stay open until he ran out of fish, which he was now estimating would be Monday.
So we had one last omakase meal...
Yeah, foie gras. Turns out Dave's wife is French and that he's moving with her there. Their family tradition during the holidays is to buy a couple lobes of foie gras and nom on it. He decided to bring one into the sushi bar with him...
Nothing exciting here except for the extremely fresh fish...
"Having fun" to Dave meant a roll of salmon belly and foie gras (seriously, again, omg) with more salmon and hamachi on the outside, dressed with chopped mangoes and candied nuts. If you have ever had ortolan, it was like that. Each piece was about 3-4 distinct layers of flavor.
Fish cheeks have the texture of crabmeat. This was also incredible. It was cooked in some sort of sweet soy.
He bought us a shot of sake in the meantime, and right before closing I said I wanted one more thing. So he grilled two of the most crazy good scallops I've ever had and wrapped them in smoked salmon. This was by far the highlight of the night.
So year, I'm done with sushi for a while. Sigh.
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Comments
Guess I wont tell them that they missed out on the master.
Q
Oh man, wish I could taste/smell the photos, that stuff looks amazing! I'll bet he loved cooking for you, taking photos and enjoying his food. I hope he finds a good spot to do his thing, he sounds like a special talent.