Sushi Yasuda, hit it before the master decamps for Tokyo

Sushi Yasuda has been one of the highest rated sushi restaurants in NY for some time now, and has been near the top of my must try list for a quite a while, but until recently I never got the kick in the pants I needed to actually call up and make a reservation.  The kick arrived in the form of information that Yasuda-san was leaving to open an 8 seat sushi bar in Tokyo, which caused me to make the call posthaste.  While I was not fleet of finger enough to secure a spot at the bar in front of Yasuda himself, our party of four did reserve the sushi bar and I still wanted to go and see him in action and enjoy a meal while the restaurant remained under his watchful eye.  I'm glad I did, as we experienced an onslaught of delicious bites, each a carefully proportioned composition of warm delicate rice topped with a excellent fish that led to a harmonious combination when eaten.  Outside of Masa, which I consider to be somewhat of a different beast, this was the best sushi I have had outside of Japan.

Outside there is no signage bearing the venue's name but just the small lit print of a fish above the entrance.  Not that the place is hidden; in fact it is quite lit and passersby can clearly observe the whole place through a large plate glass window.  We had a 6pm reservation, and our party was the first to arrive a few minutes before, as we were advised multiple times not to be late and that we had a mere 90 minute window to dine, and we did not wish to squander our time there.  I admit I was a bit concerned we would leave feeling hungry, rushed, or both, but we left quite full and happy.

Even from the other end of the bar, watching Yasuda-san work was impressive.  His hands at times seemed almost disconnected from the rest of his body, moving quite quickly, but precisely, so confident in their motion while he carried on conversation and maintained full eye contact with the patrons in front of him that his limbs seemingly had a mind of their own directing them.  But we were here for the sushi, and we were left in the more than capable hands of Chef Yoshi in front of us, pictured on the left.  I believe next to him is Mitsuru Tamura, who will take up the mantle when Yasuda-san leaves for Japan and passes the baton.

While I glanced at the short menu of appetizers from the kitchen, we ordered only sake and beer and told Yoshi we eat everything and otherwise left the choices in his hands.  Before I get to the pictures, let me address a couple things.  First, Yasuda is most well known for the quality of his rice, and rightfully so.  The flavor, texture, and mouthfeel, even the temperature, is very carefully calibrated to lift each piece to new heights.  (Although I do have to admit that one sole piece I found the rice a bit too warm, so they did not bat 1.000 for me, but pretty close.)  The second thing I had read often in other reviews is that the ratio of fish to rice was too low to fully appreciate the fish.  While I understand from whence this criticism comes, as the slices of fish did tend to the slimmer side when compared to other places, I found nearly all of my sushi to be quite balanced.  I agree the proportioning did shift the balance of the focus from the fish more towards the rice, but to my mind not in a deleterious fashion.  I believe this preparation to be quite deliberate and given the excellence of the rice, led to each piece being a masterful composition in its own right.  It is a slightly different experience then one might be used to, but I very much enjoyed it.  That said, I will concede that the one exception was the toro; I perhaps would have enjoyed that piece more had there been a bit more fish.  However, it was still great and did not stop me from getting a second piece as one of my last three bites to cap the meal.

Onto the sushi.  We started with Blue fin Tuna, for which I neglected to retrieve the camera.  Our second was Bluefin Toro:

Next we got two different pieces of Yellowtail, I believe Buri and Shimaaji.  (Forgive me if I misnote, misremember, or just mistake some of these identifications, I'm sure I've messed up a couple but I think I got most of them.)

Another thing for which I have seen raves about is Yasuda's eel, freshly prepared.  I was already had my hopes set high and was pleasantly surprised.  More than that.  I was blown away.  First I had the Shirayaki (fresh white freshwater eel) on the right, which I thought easily the best eel I've ever had.  That thought lasted until I tried the Anago (fresh dark sea eel) on the left, which, if not better, was close enough to make me think hard to decide which was best.  I think the Shirayaki wins, but both were unexpectedly delicious.

Shrimp:

Yet another notable experience at Yasuda is the flights of fish they often do, letting you try several similar fish, or different cuts of fish, back to back.  Here we had, L to R, Tasmanian ocean trout, White King Salmon, and New Zealand King Salmon:

Next was Oyster (Canada), Scallop, and Orange  clam.  The scallop was a standout we would revisit later.  The oyster was a briny delight.  I had read about a Peace Passage Oyster that is sometimes offered and came highly recommended, which I believe is different than what we got, and our Canada Oyster was the only oyster they had that night.  I hope to try the Peace Passage on a later visit.

Of the next three, the Gensaba in the middle was my favorite.  It was a tender and fatty mackerel that melted in your mouth, but, despite the fat content, it was less fishy that some lesser quality oily fishes can taste, and the delicate flavor of the fish really came through.
Spanish mackerel, Gensaba, Pompano:

Striped bass, Orato (snapper), Fluke:

Onto some Uni, always among my favorites.  I had hoped they would have uni from a couple different regions, but the only kind they had was from California, I assume Santa Barbara.  I had heard they sometimes get a special "export quality" uni from Maine with a distinctive taste that I would have enjoyed comparing to the California specimen, but it was not to be.  At least I got some Maine sea urchin from the John Dory the other day, so don't feel too sorry for me.  The California sourced uni they served us was excellent, delicious and clean tasting, and especially creamy.  Certainly up there with other good stuff I've gotten in the US, even if it doesn't measure up to my samplings in Japan.  I'd revisit the uni for my last bite.

Uni (California), Sweet shrimp, Squid:

Artic char,  Cherrystone clam, Octopus:

For the end of Yoshi's selections for us we each got three pieces of toro roll, with just a hint of scallion.  It is worth pausing here to talk about Yasuda's nori, as it is something special.  It was thin and crispy with a mild yet complex flavor.  I'm at a loss to describe it, but it was way better than your typical nori.  The chefs are aware and Yasuda is quite proud of the nori, made especially for the restaurant in Japan.  I think the kelp beds are tended to by mermaids or something, probably previously the product was destined only for the emperor.  (Speaking of the emperor, did you know that after WWII the US made him get on the radio and renounce his divinity?  Sweet.)

For the remainder of the meal, we asked specifically for what we wanted more of.  I wasn't sure how much room I had, but at the top of our lists was more eel since the first round was so fantastic.  Again, we each got one piece of freshwater and one saltwater, but they were different from the first ones we were served.  I was so anxious to eat them, that I devoured the sea eel before recording it, but I believe it was Sawani (fresh white sea eel).  The piece I did shoot I think was Unagi Kuro (fresh dark freshwater eel):

Perusing the menu to see if anything caught my eye, I asked for some Sardine and some Sayori  (needlefish), and as a bonus I got a delightful crunchy piece of cooked Sayori skin:

We were so enamored with the nori, that we did another (smaller) round of Toro scallion roll, just to get another taste.  (This was the largest miss of the night, as the fish was too cold, but it was still really good, it just could have been better.)  I really want to try a hand roll with the awesome nori next time, but we were running out of time and space, and I knew I wanted to finish with seconds of my favorites. 

And those favorites were the Uni, Scallop, and Toro.  All four eel preparations were right up there, but we had already revisited those.  These three were the perfect way to end my meal.

I must note, that while we went all out and got a ton of sushi, one of the greatest things about Sushi Yasuda, especially when compared to Masa, is that going all out is not at all necessary.  One could easily sit down and get just a handful of pieces and still get the same excellent quality with less of a hit to your stomach or wallet.  And speaking of wallets, Sushi Yasuda strikes me as extremely reasonable, if not outright inexpensive, when compared to the quality.  There are plenty of sushi places in the city that are almost the same price but fall way short in delivering excellent fish.  There are precious few places which I would not be hard pressed to justify going rather than returning here.

Remember, Yasuda-san won't be around for much longer, and while I hope the restaurant remains just as excellent, you never know.  (nb, they close from Dec 25th - Jan 10th; I believe Yasuda will stick around for a short while into January.)

Masa still great, and still lots of truffles this time of year

As I tweeted, I had the pleasure of dining at Masa for the second time last week. It remains the best Sushi experience I have had in the US; only in Tokyo have I had better, even then by just a slim margin. It is not just the sushi that elevates the experience, but some of the more composed dishes are sublime as well. On this visit, my favorite was a dish, new to me, of sliced triggerfish with truffles, gold leaf, truffle sauce, herbs, and a couple other components I do not recall:

Note that I took a bite before realizing this was so good I wanted to snap a memento; the presentation was prettier before I dug in.  As a dining companion commented, the fish had a very nice texture on the bite, almost reminiscent of quite al denta pasta. The flavor was very clean, and as you chewed the firm fish you continued to enjoy it. The truffle was very present, but did not overwhelm the fish, the truffle complemented it rather nicely.

One comment about the truffles. I think they are generally overrated. Don't get me wrong, I quite love them, but rarely enough to justify the expense. And it might seem that one must love truffles to enjoy Masa given several of the dishes I'll highlight contain them, but this is not the case. As evidence, I'll offer my wife as an example. She does not like truffles and on our first visit we simple had them left out of her dishes, as they are normally simply grated on top or perhaps dotted with a spot of sauce. Only the "truffle sushi", which is simply rice rolled in shaved truffles, did she miss out on. The several other bites were still excellent for her sans truffles, if perhaps slightly less gilded. Sure, it helps if you love truffles, but in my opinion there is plenty of consumer surplus to go around even if you don't to make it easily worth trying.

And now more truffles. This time we were offered as an option an additional appetizer of wagyu beef.  Naturally we said yes.  This dish was a very slight disappointment, but not because it wasn't awesome.  It was awesome.  It was just as good or better than other really great wagyu I've had.  The lone reason it was a let down was because it did not stand up to the similarly prepared Ohmi beef from my first visit.  Still great, just not mind blowingly indescribably great.  I'll still always get whatever additions are offered, but I just wanted to let you know that apparently it is not always as stupendous as I described previously.

It occurs to me now looking back at the post about my first meal, I went about this time of year, which may explain the proliferation of truffles.  I will endeavor to make my next visit in the spring to see what different bounty the season provides.  I assure you that most of the courses are not truffle laden, but I poorly chose the three pics I took if I was trying to illustrate that fact.  I believe, other than the aforementioned "truffle sushi", the only other truffle was a piece of octopus sushi with a dot of truffle sauce on it.  But I suppose it might behoove truffle haters to go some other time of year.  I'll let you know next spring.   Here is the truffle covered uni risotto, which I believe is something of a signature dish, though I could be mistaken: 

UPDATE: I meant to mention this originally, but forgot.  Masa no longer has the confusing automatic 20% service charge added to the bill, which they claimed was not a tip but to help cover expenses or something.  I hadn't seen this reported elsewhere so figured it is worth mentioning.

Ok, now for an addendum of embarrassing indulgence, but I'll share (once again) for the sake of a funny story.  For a variety of reasons, including but not limited to a proposed hamburger bet over a decade ago back in college, after our extravagant luxury at Masa, we left the Time Warner Center and headed downtown to Corner Bistro.  (I was dining with three college buddies, who also are coworkers.)

Now, I had no intention of getting a bistro burger, planning on just having a McSorley's Dark (or three), but old habits die hard and when the waiter came by before I knew it the phrase "Four Bistro Burger's, rare" passed my lips.  And man, if that wasn't a tasty burger.  I know, it's disgusting, and I'm ashamed, but it was a fun night. But wait, it gets worse.

After we each downed our burgers, one of us bet another of us a large sum of money that he couldn't eat two additional bistro burgers! Yes, Masa then followed immediately by three significant bacon cheeseburgers.  I was not party to the bet, although for the record I did agree to accept a share of the blame should hellfire rain down upon the proposer of the bet should the betee's wife be upset that we made him eat three bacon cheeseburgers after Masa.  Which, also for the record, he did.  We never doubted him.  And his wife took it quite well.

"Live Sushi" at Sushi Uo

UPDATE: Seems like they have gotten rid of the sushi chef I liked and introduced some gimmicks, so I can't recommend the current incarnation, not having tried it.  If you go you are on your own, but if it's still good dop me a comment.

UPDATE take 12/2010: It's closed.

I had read here a while back about Sushi Uo serving up live sushi on Tuesday nights, so naturally I put it on my list of things to try.  Months later I still had not gotten around to going when I read this other piece about the ASPCA investigating the "live sushi" and I was reminded of the place so I hit it Tuesday night.  I had intended to have a light meal, trying the live items and a few other favorites (ie uni), but once I hit the sushi bar I, as usual, succumbed to temptation had them serve up the fullest omakase they were equipped to handle on a Tuesday.  I was not disappointed.  The place serves top notch fish at quite reasonable prices.
First, I should point out that the live sushi is not as crazy as the still moving tentacles of octopus on the plate in the videos you may have seen on Youtube (which I obviously still intend to try sometime).  Instead, I believe it simply means that the creature involved arrived live at the restaurant and was dispatched shortly before being served, and they were mollusks such as the aforementioned octopus, scallops, clams, abalone and the like.  Analogous to cooked to order live lobster perhaps.  I was drawn by the allure of the new to me live sushi, but I'll go back for the excellent regular menu.
I definitely recommend sitting at the sushi bar, which is always the way to go, but at this place more so because the chef, despite having worked at more formal places such as 15 East and Masa, is quite casual, friendly, and chatty.

The first course was a trio of amuses, charred live octopus, a refreshing seaweed salad, and Maine uni dressed with salmon roe.  The octopus had a nice texture and mild flavor accented by the char and I believe a little acidic dressing.  (It was a very small space and all the charring and grilling was done using a handheld torch, while the eel dishes were heated in a toaster oven.)  The uni was fantastic.  I have not ever knowingly had uni from Maine, and it was perfectly mild, creamy, and briny.

The next course was something new to the menu, a toro tartare atop grilled rice topped with a tempura egg yolk.  I inquired how they made the tempura egg yolk with out breaking it, and my query was answered with "very carefully".  The yolk was still molten inside such that you could break open the tempura and the yolk would flow over the toro.  In my picture you can barely see the grilled rice but it was a very important component of the dish, lending some nice texture and equally pleasant char flavor to each bite when you got a bit of everything.

The next dish was a richly flavored but still light clam soup.  In the spoon there were bits of "clam custard" which I was instructed I could use to enrich the soup.  I took that advice with some of them, and the others I just ate because they were delicious:

And here was the sashimi course:

Forgive my lack of memory, but my best recollection is, going around the perimeter: at the top is pen scallop, 1 o'clock was live (something?) clam, 5 o'clock fluke, 6 o'clock live octopus, 7 o'clock toro, 9 o'clock Japanese uni, 11 o'clock live red clam (in the abalone shell).  In the interior at 12 o'clock is hamachi, 1 o'clock bass (with seared skin), 3 o'clock ebi, 6 o'clock salmon, and 9 o'clock aji.  All were great, but my favorites were definitely 6 o'clock to 11 o'clock.  The salmon and the toro were both silky, the uni just as good as its earlier counterpart from Maine but perhaps a bit richer, the octopus mild and pleasantly meaty but not too chewy, and perhaps my favorite of all was the red clam, perhaps because I've not had it before.  It was almost like a very al dente pasta that tasted slightly of the sea.

Next came some courses from the kitchen, the first was Wasabi Gnocci with crispy salmon skin, in light lemon dill butter sauce with grated almond:

The gnocci were nice and light with a pleasant mild wasabi flavor, and the crispy skin provided nice textural counterpoint and extra richness.  I was starting to get pretty full so I went easy on this one, it was the raw items I came for.

Still full, I was tripped up by the next dish.  The gnocci were followed by Braised Boneless Short Ribs with fennel salad and parsnip puree (I'd already attacked this before I took the pic):

Unlike the gnocci, these were not light, but they were delicious.  Tender and beefy, with a rich sauce and richer silky puree underneath.  I had to try hard not to eat too much of this, because I had sushi yet to come.

As the finale was the sushi course where each piece was set before me one at a time, I didn't photograph them, nor can I recall them all, but they were superb, a couple of them were highlights of the night. I do recall an excellent scallop, the final bite was a fantastic morsel of eel, an probably my favorite was a piece of hamachi belly. I believe this was a new piece to me, and the chef informed me that there are only four pieces of this cut on each fish, and I got one of the four he had that night. It was to hamachi as toro is to tuna. I love toro. And I prefer hamachi to tuna. so you can imagine how much I enjoyed this.

In conclusion, I came for the novelty of the live items, but I've just added Sushi Uo to my list of go to Sushi joints for the future.

Masa and his Ohmi Beef

We finally got around to dining at Masa last Saturday night.  I'd been meaning to check it out for years but never got around to it until now.  And we were able to get good reservations for Sat night only a day or two in advance.  And at the sushi bar.  Definitely sit at the sushi bar!  Going there and sitting at a table would be silly.  Sure, the same guy is making the sushi, but you don't get to experience seeing him make each individual piece and putting them one at a time right in front of you.  For several courses the piece is too fragile to put down and the chef literally hands it to you.  Hand to hand to mouth.  This symphony is part of the experience.
I wasn't going to take pictures until I tried the Ohmi beef (draped generously with truffles).  This dish of Ohmi beef (or Omi beef, or Om-gyu) is now otherwise known as the new best thing I've ever tasted:

I literally could not stop myself from moaning after each bite of this it was so good.  This was surprising because I'm not a huge fan of either truffles or Kobe beef (especially outside Japan, but I take back what I said before).  Don't get me wrong, I love both of them, but generally think their appeal is somewhat over-rated, although this one data point may force me to rethink all that.  I had to do a bit of research to figure out exactly what it was I had.  Ohmi beef is similar to Kobe beef in that they are both from the Wagyū (wa=Japan + gyu=beef) breed of cattle, except that Kobe is made in Hyōgo Prefecture around Kobe, and Ohmi is made in Shiga Prefecture around the town of Ōmihachiman.  I gather the main difference is slight variations in climate and local diet.  Also note that this dish was a supplement to the normal already extravagant fixed price, but when you are splurging on a place like this, why not go all out.

While the Ohmi was the highlight for me, everything was fantastic and I'm sorry I didn't get there sooner.  I think part of my delay was because I really didn't expect it to be nearly this good, due to the fact that I went to a highly rated sushi place in Tokyo and found its sushi to be only a bit better that the admittedly awesome sushi I had in that city at much cheaper places.  (The experience of sitting at the sushi bar at a tiny place in Tokyo and having a lavish meal was worth it, but the food was not as above and beyond as I had expected.)

I only snapped a few pics on the iPhone before I got scolded and stopped, but here is the best toro I've ever had.  (I knew it before I took the pic because it was the second piece they gave us.)

 

 The sushi display and the master himself:

I'll certainly be back.