Archive
Houston Sushi: Kata Robata (Mar. 2013)
Author: Victor
Restaurant: Kata Robata
Exec Chef: Manabu Horiuchi
Website: http://katarobata.com/
Date: March 22, 2013
Notes:
Kata Robata is the second Japanese restaurant that I was looking to check out in Houston. (The first was Uchi.) The menu has some fantastic and exciting options. There were lots of different flavor combinations that I wanted to try out, so I ended up ordering a massive amount of food… once again haha.
This is definitely a restaurant that I’d go back to again, if only to check out the hot and cold dishes. The sushi was about average, and I don’t think I’d come back for the sushi (either the rolls or the nigiri), especially when I can just go to Uchi. Instead, check out the hot dishes, cold dishes, and the robata items!
The lighting for the tables at the restaurant was horrible, so a lot of the pics aren’t great. I used a flashlight app on my friend’s iPhone as background lighting for some of them. I guess the restaurant is meant to be all classy and romantic haha.
Houston Sushi: Uchi (Mar. 2013)
Author: Victor
Restaurant: Uchi
Exec Chef: Tyson Cole
Chef de Cuisine: Kaz Edwards
Website: http://uchirestaurants.com/houston/index.php
Date: March 20, 2013
Notes:
I have wanted to try Uchi for a few months now, especially after hearing my friends from Texas rave about it. Anyway, I decided to visit a friend in Houston because I was in the area (New Orleans! Whoo!), and I decided that I should finally try the restaurant!
The restaurant’s a LOT bigger than I thought it would be. The restaurant would NOT be able to be as big as it was in NYC haha. Oh, Texas… Anyway, the restaurant has five separate dining areas. The wine bar seating has no reservations, and you can sit there and eat or drink if you can manage to snag a seat. The cocktail tables outside serve cocktails and little snacks, such as edamame. The tables and sushi bar usually have reservations, but you can still get seated if you wait (usually at least an hour); Uchi only allows reservations for a relatively small portion of the tables/seats. You can’t reserve directly for the sushi bar, though; it’s on a first-come, first-serve basis. Lastly, the private dining room is generally for dinner parties or business dinners.
We arrived about an hour early, so we just started chatting a bit near the wine bar. We eventually snagged seats at the wine bar and ordered a few appetizers before we started our main meal (comprised of mainly nigiri) at the sushi bar.
The food’s fantastic and really, really creative. I personally think some of the places in NYC are better in terms of traditional nigiri, especially when you consider only the rice and the fish. I’ve had places in NYC with better fish, rice, or both, but what this place does well (and it does it REALLY well) is execution of more modern and innovative flavor combinations. You have to check out the menu to see what I mean! (You can check out the menu here.)
I really wish I could eat everything on the menu. Everything just looks… delicious, fascinating, innovative, creative, and at times even genius, crazy, or both. Chef Cole is onto something here. I really wish NYC had a restaurant like this.
Nigiri analysis:
The rice was about room temperature and could arguably be a little warmer. Also, it wasn’t too fluffy; it could definitely be a little softer and fluffier.
The fish was really fresh overall, but I think the rarer pieces (like the threadfin snapper or the albacore) were better than the more common pieces (like akami or sake). I thought this was a shame; really good akami is something that can make me a really happy eater—the akami here was merely good :(.
Regarding the nigiri, the fish didn’t always melt in my mouth, and it could be pretty inconsistent. At times, the sushi piece was amazing, and the fish tasted really, really fresh; at other times, the nigiri merely tasted pretty good.
I’m a little sad that Uchi doesn’t serve chūtoro, ōtoro, or tamago. I’m curious as to what Chef Cole would do with those ingredients.
NYC Sushi: Sushi Seki (Mar. 2013)
Author: Victor
Restaurant: Sushi Seki
Chef: Seki (I can’t find his first name on Google; we’ll just assume his first name is “Chef” ^_^.)
Date: March 9, 2013
Notes:
Sushi Seki is one of the more famous sushi places in the Upper East Side, and I’ve wanted to try it for a while now. It’s known for its inventive/fusion sushi, and in that respect it’s very similar to Sushi of Gari—both specialize in sosaku sushi, which involves using other ingredients, such as sauces, to complement and pair with the fish.
Seki’s actually quite a bit cheaper than Gari, so price is definitely something to keep in consideration if you’re choosing between the two. ALSO, the sushi bar is apparently open until 2:30 to 3:00 a.m. That… is… amazing. I kind of want to come back when I’m drunk. (Then again, good sushi would probably be wasted on me in that state. Still… I WANT TO TRY.)
Food-wise, both have great seafood, but the rice at Seki was a taaaaaaad bit too hard/grainy for my taste. (The temperature was about right, though!) I prefer the sushi rice at Gari (either at the Upper East Side or Upper West Side location) to that of Seki.
Unfortunately, a few of the sushi pieces are inspired by (or stolen from, depending on your viewpoint) Gari but were inferior in taste. Apparently, Seki trained at Sushi of Gari, and he utilizes (or copied) quite a few of Gari’s creations (for instance, the tuna with tofu sauce, freshwater eel with avocado, and salmon with sautéed tomato).
Seki also might have more variety than Gari does. Gari has about ~50 different combinations, while our sushi chef at Seki implied that they still had many more combinations available after we finished our meal. We actually took that as a challenge to eat more haha, but we decided it’d be better to eat less so that we could prepare for the massive amount of drinking later on in the night—four friends were celebrating their birthdays, which meant… SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS!!!
Food:
1. Chūtoro (medium-fatty tuna).
The fish was excellent, but the rice was a bit too hard.
Monte
Victor
tadv3
Happy Noms 