Thursday, November 30, 2017

Sushi Azabu

We got the $180 omakase with both the uni and toro tastings, and while the sushi (and other dishes) were good, it was really not that standout considering the price and the many other amazing sushi places in NYC.

The sushi is prepared very traditionally, and no special sauces are used (I am perfectly fine with that).  The quality of fish was decent but not mind blowing, and unfortunately the selection of fish we had was pretty ordinary: medium fatty tuna, salmon, sea bream, scallop, pike mackerel, snapper, white shrimp, uni, ikura, half roll of tuna with pickled daikon, tamago, and anago.  



I was initially most excited by the prospect of uni and toro tastings (the whole reason I decided to come here), but those were disappointing.  The uni tasting we had were from 2 different regions of Hokkaido, and the dish was presented with some seaweed so you could wrap it on your own.  On the plus side, it was a worthy tasting in the sense that you could definitely taste the difference.  However, I didn't love either uni and have had better uni at many other sushi restaurants.  The toro tasting came with 3 small pieces of toro -- a medium fatty toro, a seared medium fatty toro, and a fatty toro.  All were decent, but again, nothing too memorable, sadly.


  

Of the other dishes, the most memorable was the hot course -- normally a piece of grilled miso king crab, but we were also offered an option to get a foie gras chawanmushi, so we opted for one of each (crab and foie gras) so we could try both.  The foie gras chawanmushi had beautiful presentation with caviar and gold leaves, but the foie gras itself was a bit hard and not as soft and creamy and buttery as I was expecting.  (Normally I forget foie gras is liver because it's so soft and buttery, but in this instance, the texture was very much like liver.)  The miso king crab was delicious and my favorite item of the night, but each piece was pretty small.



 

Overall, nothing was bad, but we were expecting much better given the price, the reviews, and other experiences at similarly priced places.

No comments:

Post a Comment