where to go in cincinnati if you want sashimi

living in new york, home of the $12 chirashi, pretty much puts you (or me at least) off of sushi rolls for good.  i will still get them if i am at like dancing wasabi or whatever place that sells half off rolls all the time or with other people who want to share rolls.  i can eat rolls and enjoy them.  but true sushi bliss for me can only be found in straight up pieces of fresh, buttery, tender raw fish.  here are my favorite to least favorite places to go for sashimi (or chirashi if you luck out and they have it).  this is by no means an exhaustive list, i am sure there are other good sashimi options out there.  my rankings are based on the following factors: freshness + selection + good value.

1. ruthai.  this is your absolute best bet for a generous portion of fresh, varied fish.  the sashimi special is $21 and you get way more than the 12 pieces that they say you are going to get, and there is mackerel (my favorite) and tuna and white tuna and salmon and shrimp and snapper and yellowtail and octopus and the pieces are big.  plus this place is byob.  you can't lose.
2. mr. sushi.  surprisingly high quality (i don't know why i'm surprised, i guess i just figured that anything located directly next door to "bartini" was going to give me food poisoning to go with my alcohol poisoning) and the chirashi is a great deal at $17.  you can also get a sashimi platter for i think $20 but whenever i can go for chirashi i do.
3. mei.  this might be higher up in the list if it wasn't so far and if i had been there recently.  chirashi is $21 and excellent.  they just have great sushi and great everything else japanese and a great atmosphere.
4. ko sho.  i used to fear ko sho when it was in the dilapidated, deserted location downtown (how could that scary place possibly be able to store and prepare decent raw fish?) but now that they are in northside i like it.  the sushi is all really fresh and they give you a great selection, it's just a little pricy.  i think the chirashi is $23 and the sashimi platter is $27.  they do have an excellent selection of other delicious japanese treats too so if you are looking for more than just sushi this is a good choice.
5. green papaya.  this is just ok.  there is no chirashi and the sashimi deluxe is $23, and one of your 12 pieces of fish is a fucking crab stick (seriously???) and the rest is just tuna, salmon, shrimp, and yellowtail... yawn.
6. painted fish.  i have been there twice and see no reason to ever go back.  there are white people making your sushi which scares me right there, sorry to be racist about it but they are proving my stereotype right.  service is slow and one time i was there, all of the sushi (rolls) we got were made with undercooked rice.  it was impossible to enjoy.  the other time i got the chirashi and it took two hours to get it so i don't even remember if it was good or not because i was delusional from hunger.  also i feel like it was expensive but was too lightheaded to be able to remember any prices.

totally unacceptably omitted from this list: ando.  i feel certain that they have amazingly delicious sashimi but i have actually never gotten sushi there any time i have gone... i always go for one of the traditional japanese dinners and last time i was there i got the shabu shabu.  this is just wrong and i strongly urge you to try the sushi if you are there because i am sure based on the freshness of everything else i have had there, and how authentic their menu is, and how good the sushi on other people's plates looks that it is delicious.

yes i have seriously never been to: jo an.  i know.  i know.  i need to go.  but it's far.  someone please take me there.  and buy my dinner.  no stalkers need apply.  thanks.

westside adventure

i love my roommate. i know i gush about him all the time but he really is the best. as tempting as it is however i am not allowed to pimp him out over this blog. sorry boys.

anyway, so yesterday i was feeling super crabby and cabin fevery because i have been sick with this weird virus that gave me fevers and "temporary arthritis" of the knees. temporary arthritis. i have never heard of this before but apparently it is something you can get with viruses. yes, i am officially a grandma. so i was really ornery because i had been sitting around the house for days watching way too much shitty tv and i was starting to lose my ability to socially interact in a normal way.

brian saw only one solution to this problem... let me loose on the westside. he grew up in... western hills? cheviot? i don't really know. somewhere far. so into the car we went to check out the one (that we know of) japanese restaurant on the westside, sakura.

on the drive i started dreaming about ramen and tempura and bento boxes. brian had never heard of a bento box before so i got him all fired up about it. well then we pull into the parking lot and i realized that maybe my dream was going to remain a dream. "are you sure we're in the right place?" i asked. "yes," said brian. "i told you it was in a hotel."

yes, this is what it really looked like

brian had told me that he used to work at sakura when it was another restaurant back in high school and he was excited to see how it looked now. well it turns out nothing had changed since 2000, or since 1978 for that matter.

damn, i forgot my quaaludes

"we can go somewhere else if you want," said brian. "no," i said, "it's cool. we're here now. let's see what this is all about." i snapped photos of people in cowboy hats while we waited for a table.

brian comes face to face with what could have been his destiny

when we sat down and looked at the menu i got confused. "where are the bento boxes?" i wondered. then it dawned on me. there were no bento boxes. this was some benihana spinoff. we asked for a sushi menu and after giving us a crazy look and announcing that she had a "pen fetish," our waitress wandered off, never to return.

this is the actual menu. those are the actual prices. also, is it just me or is this the first time chateaubriand has appeared on a menu since 1978?

another waitress, who was actually japanese, brought us sushi menus. i had gotten all fired up about drinking mai tais and living it up 70s style but after facing some definitively non-70s prices, we ended up just sticking to water. long wait times were not a problem however because there was lots of great people watching to be had.

dude: so do you know why these people are so skinny?

girl: no, why?

dude: because they eat rice with those sticks and they can only pick it up a little bit at a time and they get tired so they never eat that much.

girl: ohhh.

we did finally get our sushi and it was ok. i give them points for presentation because it did look pretty cool. however the quality of the fish was mediocre... it's not that it had gone bad, it was just flavorless. and almost every sushi option involved a generous dousing of mayo, or something cooked, neither of which are my preferred sushi roll preparations.

pretty...

...but not that good

finally we got our bill and got the hell out of there. we paid $50 including tax and tip which i thought was a lot. i know i am probably preaching to the choir here, but for god's sake do not drive a half hour into the west side to try to get good sushi. for the people watching however, it is definitely worth it.

people watching aside, i needed some kind of gustatory redemption so i asked for my westside guide to take me to one of those west side whippy dip places i keep hearing about. brian knew just the place... zip dip. he made me branch out from my usual boring twist cone so i got a butterscotch sundae and it was delicious.

confucius say... when on the westside, eat as the westsiders eat

i want blue!!!

i want some creamy whip in my mouth!!!

every time i go to the west side i feel like i am in some crazy bizarro sequel to napoleon dynamite where everyone is kind of living in a different time, and yet there is still internet and energy drinks and cell phones. i love it though and a trip to the west side is always the perfect distraction from whatever normal everyday problems i might be having. thanks brian!

suzie wong's on madison

yum, suzie wong's is so good! i have to admit, i was skeptical about a "pan asian" restaurant run by the former owner of shanghai mama's (yes, i still hate that place and i have eaten there several more times since the last time i bitched about it so please no admonitions to give it another try. everything is bland and tastes like soy sauce and makes me sad. ok shanghai mama's rant over).

anyway, suzie wong's is excellent. i went with erin last week and since it is currently byob and prices are good ($2-12 for appetizers, $8-16 for entrees) we felt that we could splurge and get a feast. we had the following items:

• cambodian beef carpaccio: beef filet with fresh herb marinade, lime, extra virgin olive oil, and garnished with fresh basil and chili peppers. amazing! my favorite thing we had all night.
• thai green lip mussels: sauteed mussels in a tangy thai seafood broth. sooo good. the broth tasted like tom yum soup. we were eating it with spoons.
• malaysian chicken in a clay pot: chicken breast, sweet onion, green and red pepper, seasonal vegetables sauteed in a malaysian yellow curry and served in a country clay pot. awesome. so delicious. the curry was complex and savory and rich. erin said it reminded her of japanese curry, and she just got back from a trip to japan so i believe her.
• korean jap chae noodles: glass noodles sauteed with sesame oil, korean chili paste, and kimchi. eh. the only one i was not crazy about. not bad, just kind of bland. our waiter had to bring me some chili sauce to spice it up and it still wasn't that great. i've had much better at riverside and korea house. however, not bad. just not exciting.
• chinese broccoli in oyster sauce. wonderful. of course, i am a chinese broccoli freak so maybe not everyone would love this as much as i did. it was perfectly prepared, crunchy and delicate at the same time. yum.

the service on the whole was very good. there was one waitress we weren't really crazy about (she kind of got off on the wrong foot with us when we asked for recommendations from the fascinating menu and she told us to get egg rolls and calamari... boring... and she seemed to keep having conflicts with other staff). but everyone else definitely made up for it. they checked in with us regularly and really seemed to care whether we liked the food, and always made sure we had a fresh beer open.

the space is pretty similar to what it looked like when seny was in there... very red with christmas lights around, and a few asian touches now. it looks nice, and parking is easy. sorry i don't have any photos but it's pretty dark in there and i didn't want to use the flash.

i would definitely try to get there soon, not because it's going to close (i don't think it is) but because the current byob situation makes it such a good deal. we heard that they have applied for a liquor license so i am sure it is coming soon.

overall this place is awesome and an excellent addition to the neighborhood. they also deliver to a pretty wide area so if you are not in the mood to leave your house, you can maybe still enjoy their delicious food.

dancing wasabi is now 1/2 off every night

i just wanted to let you guys know that right now dancing wasabi in mt. lookout is offering their 1/2 off sushi special (normally available wed and thurs from 5 pm-close and fri and sat nights from 10 pm-2 am) every night mon-sat. how long will this deal last? beth and i went last week and they told her it was going to be for "at least a month" and "probably until we shut down ichiban." so get your cheap sushi while it lasts!

sake bomb

"westender" of clark street blog was kind (crazy?) enough to organize a blogger happy hour at sake bomb in east hyde park. the company was good and mostly food bloggers: k and b of westside foodie wannabes, laura and david of cincinnati nomerati, jeff of a dork and his pork, l and j of cincyspin, and the artist formerly (and currently) known as 5chw4r7z. rumor has it jen of tavern wench was also there but left before i arrived, and actually that is a new blog to me so i will have to check it out.

hmm... a blogger happy hour. sound nerdy? it was.

nerdy or not, it was also a fun time. i know many people think of bloggers (other than myself of course) as socially inept freaks with very little ability to interact successfully with other human beings in public. however, i have not found this to be true. i think people are mixing bloggers up with the chat room and message board crowd. my theory now that i have met a number of other bloggers is that if you have enough to say that you start up a blog about it, and if people actually want to come and read it, you are probably going to be pretty interesting in person.

anyway, enough of me trying to justify my nerdiness. on to the food. i actually did not get that much, i ordered only two rolls (a spicy tuna roll and a hot mama roll) and a miller lite. i'm on a budget and even with the 15% off that westender managed to get for our group by sleeping with, i mean befriending, the owner, prices still looked kind of high.

i thought the rolls were ok. they were very spicy. the table had warned me about that but i was thinking to myself "whatever, these internet nerds don't know spicy." well they were right. i actually thought the rolls were too spicy, but maybe that is because i also dumped a bunch of wasabi in my soy sauce. i pretty much never think anything is too spicy, so this is saying a lot.

the rice was good and the fish was of good quality, but i thought the rolls were kind of small for the price. also, i had been expecting something different from the hot mama roll. it was described as: "tuna, salmon, yellowtail, red snapper, garlic, special hot sauce" and it was priced at $7.95. i expected some large pieces of fish both inside and on top, and what they did was just blend up the fish together into a mush. there was not much of it and it was just on the inside of the roll. it was disappointing. the spicy tuna roll ($5.95) was ok but nothing special.

would you pay $20 for this?

at the end of our meal, the restaurant surprised us with a plate of desserts. again, just ok. the one thing i liked was the banana spring roll. the other things on the tray (deep fried cheesecake and brownies) were nothing special in my opinion and were way too heavy and sweet for me after sushi. the owner also came around and gave us a taste of some "dessert sake" that he is planning to add to the menu.

the atmosphere was ok, it felt kind of generic and strip mall-ish and the crowd was mostly rich hyde park (and internet nerds). the service was great, very friendly and helpful.

my bill for 2 smallish sushi rolls and a miller lite, after the 15% off, was $16.63. so normal price would have been like $20, before tip. this is just too much, unless you are serving me the best damn sushi of my life. i probably will not go back to sake bomb. had i not also had the free desserts, the free sake, the beer that westender treated me to, and the fun company of a bunch of internet nerds, i would have been pretty unsatisfied with this meal. and i doubt i am going to prance in there and get all this free shit again. unlike some people i am not willing to compromise my morals for some fish and rice. now a steak on the other hand...

(note: i forgot my camera so the photo is courtesy of 5chw4r7z)

dancing wasabi update

i already did a longer review of dancing wasabi about a year and a half ago, so i'm not going to go into too much detail. but i stopped there last week for dinner with lauren and it was damn tasty. we went for the half price sushi that they offer: all day wednesday, all day thursday, and from 10 pm - 2 am on friday and saturday nights.

the sushi was great and the service was fine given how busy they were, but beware... the wait times can be horrible. we were lucky since there were only two of us and got a table in about 25 minutes, but there were many large groups which were told they were going to have an hour or so to wait. plus every inch of the place was jam packed with people staring at you like a hawk while you ate. i am not kidding, there were people jammed right up against our table.

our fishtastic spread

all this would not even have been that bad (after all, it's half price sushi) except for the fact that we were there on The Coldest Day In Recorded History and people kept walking in, holding the door open while they debated whether to wait, left, came back in, went out, checked back in on the wait, held the door while they yelled to their friends on the street, etc. it was cold as FUCK. i mean, it made the meal kind of miserable. which sucks since we were having cheap delicious sushi.

all they need to do is just get one of those little temporary vestibule things that every other city in the united states besides cincinnati has discovered (read about the vestibule here... i could not find any pictures after searching on google images for like 10 minutes) and they would be all set. with so much traffic in and out on a cold winter night, the tiny restaurant was freezing. but maybe they don't care since the place was jam packed anyway.

beluga

liberal foodie had the brilliant idea of gathering up our friends tonight for half off sushi night at beluga. being the anal planner that i am (and trust me readers, social events are pretty much the only thing i am meticulous about... i don't think i even know how to balance a checkbook), i started having heart palpitations over the fact that we did not have a reservation so i made one for us. good thing i did since the restaurant had exactly two tables taken when we got there...

can i just say right now that i love beluga. i can't believe i have never been there. first of all, the atmosphere is so fun. there are a bunch of little different rooms and i love how they are decorated. it is a really fun and interesting place, and it feels classy without being overdone. here are some photos of the interior of the restaurant:

the front room is a restaurant until the late hours, when it turns more into an extension of the bar

the front half of the sushi bar

the ceiling above the bar

half price sushi is a great deal. you can't get every roll on their menu (for example, none of the rolls involving lobster are available for half price) but you have a damn good selection. half price sushi is available at beluga every wednesday from 5 pm - 2 am, and every friday and sat night from 11 pm - 2 am. while the prices are kind of high normally (at least for me who is cheap, not necessarily for sushi in general) at approx $8-$18 for rolls, half price makes it totally doable. we had 6 people for dinner and we all had drinks and the total bill including tip was $200.

las chicas

the service was absolutely awesome. possibly the best service overall that i have experienced in cincinnati. i stayed for a long dinner, and then hung out for drinks at the bar. i talked to bus boys, the hostess, a waiter, two bartenders, and several kitchen staff and everyone was totally friendly, welcoming, and helpful. lucas the bartender kept stopping by to chat. the hostess hung our coats and offered to take pictures of us. the kitchen staff let us peek in and gave us the secret to their creme brulee (green tea).

mas chicas

good service can go such a long way with me in terms of my overall enjoyment of a restaurant and i really found beluga's to be flawless. everyone seemed to enjoy their job and to love their customers which is awesome. i can't say the same for other places in hyde park (ahem red ahem) and actually i maybe hadn't made a point to go to beluga until now because i was worried about snobbiness. beluga's entire staff was totally friendly and completely lacking pretentiousness. i love that.

henry joined us and opted for breast milk instead of sushi

on to the food. the sushi was good. it was not the best sushi i have ever had, or even the best sushi i have had in cincinnati. but it was very good. they have a large and interesting selection of rolls. i thought the salmon and yellowtail were really fresh and delicious. the tuna, shrimp, and crab were ok but not outstanding. the wine selection was extensive without being overwhelming and had something for every price range.

this is only about 2/3 of the sushi we ordered

after dinner, a few of us moved to the front bar and had more drinks and conversation. the mixed drinks were very tasty, and i especially recommend the fresh beluga (cucumber, lime, sake, and who knows what else). the bartenders were both really fun and even made up drinks for us which totally hit the spot.

artistic martini photo courtesy of liberal foodie

the one thing that wasn't so great about beluga was the parking. a couple people in our group had parked behind the restaurant, and emma got ticketed even though she was only five minutes late getting out to her car. there was a police officer watching the meters and ticketing people the minute their meter went over. that is bullshit.

however, i am sure beluga has no control over the parking situation since if they did, they would have been much nicer about it. i had an excellent night eating, drinking, and hanging out at beluga, and i totally recommend it. if you can hit it on half price night, it's even better.

CAM and sushi making

my exciting food project for the weekend was to learn to make sushi rolls. i had never made them before and it has been a goal of mine for a while. since i just got a rice cooker recently, and since i am hoping to make some for my book club's holiday party in a few weeks, it seemed like a good time to try.

before i made the sushi though i took a trip to cincinnati asian market (aka CAM) to pick up some supplies. if you have never been to CAM, you need to go. it is by far the best source of asian foods anywhere in cincinnati. much bigger and more selection than the place at findlay market and all the other small places around.

look no further for all your asian food needs

CAM is not just a store, it's a supermarket. they have aisles and aisles of everything you could possibly need for any type of asian cooking. i will show you some pictures so you can get an idea.

CAM offers a variety of brands of chinese sausage but kam yen jan is my favorite

yes, they have an entire aisle of soy sauce and rice vinegar

crazy big bags of rice

CAM is very vegetarian friendly. if i were a vegetarian i would shop here all the time. they have more kinds of gluten, bean curd, and fake meat than i ever knew existed

all that and an amazing tofu selection!

if you like fun drinks then CAM is the place for you. they have all kinds of yummy juices and coffees.

where else in cincinnati can you buy fresh quail eggs?

the sweets aisle. my favorites are pocky, fruit gummies, and ginger candy

CAM also offers a lot of other good stuff not pictured above. they have fresh roast pork and duck. they have all kinds of vegetables and fruits that you can't find anywhere else (chinese broccoli, longan, chayote, rambutan, daikon, etc.). they have a huge fresh fish selection. they also have a huge frozen fish selection. there is an entire aisle of frozen dumplings and buns and other yummy dim sum items. they have a wide variety of rice cookers, steamers, teapots, chopsticks, and other kitchen wares. they have an aisle dedicated solely to pickled vegetables.

after my jaunt to CAM, where i bought necessary sushi supplies (rice, nori, pickled ginger) as well as some completely unnecessary treats (kimchi, pocky, jasmine tea, canned mackerel belly in ginger sauce) i came home and started on the sushi. i was using a recipe that avani's friend had given her, and i was supplementing that with an ina garten recipe i had seen on tv a while ago.

this recipe has seen a lot of use

it may seem odd to use sushi recipes from an indian girl and a white woman from the hamptons, but i tried googling and got overwhelmed so i decided to just stick to what i kind of knew on my first try. so i gathered my supplies together and got started. i decided i would do veggie rolls with some combination of cucumber, carrot, and avocado, and fish rolls. i was too cheap to buy sushi grade fish, so i bought smoked salmon and cream cheese and did philadelphia rolls.

ready, set, sushi!

i ended up making about six rolls with mixed results. first of all, i don't think i was rolling some of them tightly enough. i guess that comes with practice. another problem i had was that my fillings were not staying in the middle. this caused a problem because i think the heat of the rice is what causes the nori to stick to itself. in the places where the cold veggies and fish touched the nori, it wouldn't stick to itself. i remedied that by putting a little hot water on the nori and then squeezing the roll for a while, but i don't think that is the ideal way to do it. my knives are perpetually too dull so that was kind of a problem when cutting.

also, fyi, the recipe above calls for way too much rice vinegar. i used 4 tablespoons for 2 cups of rice, and it was almost too much.

the finished product

my sushi turned out ok but not great. i am very pleased for my first try though. i nibbled on a few pieces that kind of fell apart while i was cutting them. however, at the end of the process, i no longer felt like eating sushi. that happens to me sometimes where i am really craving something kind of complicated, then i go through all the work of making it and then when it is done i don't want it anymore. it's annoying. does that ever happen to you guys?

at any rate after all that sushi making i decided in the end that i wanted mashed potatoes and made that. the sushi is all sitting in my fridge. hopefully i will feel like eating it tomorrow for lunch...

teak thai, baseball, and king wok

my sister laura came to visit this weekend so clearly there was a lot of eating to be done. we started out the weekend right with pesto and gnocchi sent with laura by my mom. we sat outside and drank beer and ate the pasta. yummy. we then ran out for movies and ice cream. we spent the evening watching the darjeeling limited (boring... do not waste your time) and eating drumsticks. then we passed out at like 11 pm because i am a grandma.

the next day we slept in and spent the day exploring cincinnati. we got hungry and fortunately laura came bearing my stepdad's credit card with the instruction to buy ourselves dinner and "don't spend more than $100." this is cincinnati after all so it was not hard to do, although we did want to get our money's worth obviously.

laura had been to teak thai before and loved it, and since we were in the mood for sushi and dining al fresco, we headed over there. we decided to get there right at 5 since we were planning to go to the baseball game at 7. well good thing we rushed since we were the only people there! well that is not totally true, there were a few people eating inside. we left at like 6:30 though and there was still no one on the patio. it was crazy.

sushi bridge = AWESOME

we got the sushi boat. i was so excited about this since it has been my dream in life for years to order a sushi boat but i just can never afford it. well actually our boat was a bridge but we did not care. the sushi was very yummy... i had never had teak's sushi before. everything else i've had there (various curries, some noodle dishes, the hot pot) have all been excellent. service is also great and it's not too expensive. the only thing that kind of sucks is the parking. but overall i have always had a good experience there.

we loved the sushi so much that we did not even care that the flies were all over it

after sushi we headed over to the baseball game. we parked kind of far from the stadium so we wouldn't have to pay so we strolled through downtown cincinnati a bit. laura kept exclaiming, "cincinnati is SO RIDICULOUS! this place is SO WEIRD!" but she liked it. we just kept seeing strange random sights such as people with a grill out on the sidewalk, people in weird outfits, random dance party on fountain square, etc. in other words your normal cincinnati things. but i remember my first days here and i remember the feeling of "where the hell am i?" very well.

normally i chow down at baseball games. i always have to have beer and a corn dog (or sometimes two) and also at least one other snack. however, after all that sushi all we had room for was some nachos. well other than beer of course... we drank plenty of that. laura ordered the nachos and they asked her "do you want sauce?" and she was like "sauce? what's sauce? i just want nachos!" they ended up giving her "sauce" which turned out to be salsa. laura: "sauce, what the hell! cincinnati is so weird!"

nachos with "sauce"

laura had actually never been to a baseball game before which is why she wanted to go so bad. it was a really fun night to go. it was "80s night" so they were showing all these old tv shows before the game started. they also gave out these adam dunn bobbleheads which somehow had to do with the 80s. now i have no idea who the hell adam dunn is (i am guessing some baseball player?) but nothing makes me happier than a free toy so that was awesome.

today we went to see the batman movie which laura really wanted to see. i liked it actually more than i thought i would but damn was it long. my attention span just is not what it used to be. and after batman we were craving some chinese so we headed over to king wok, which is in my opinion the best chinese in cincinnati.

i seriously wonder how people put up with me constantly forcing them to be in photos like this

now i know no one else thinks king wok is that great but i love it. the food is by far the most authentic and delicious chinese i've found in cincinnati and they have lots of seafood options and they do dim sum on weekends and they even put the chinese part of the menu in english! it is cheap and they are nice to me, even when i am telling them that yes please i really want this spicy i promise i will not send it back please please please. king wok is totally one of my standbys and i think you should run not walk there ASAP.

please refrain from licking your computer screen

laura is gone now and i am bored and lonely and depressed since it is sunday night and i am all by myself and i do not feel like going to work tomorrow and my apartment is a mess and i have a pile of dishes in the kitchen. i think i will go feel sorry for myself now, or else maybe i will just get into those drumsticks remaining in my freezer...

dancing wasabi

ok, i had eaten at dancing wasabi a couple times before, but i was not prepared for what i got last week when i went with brian and patricia. in the past, i had gone for dinner at around 7ish during the week, sat outside, ordered a couple rolls, and read a book or the newspaper. i thought the sushi was good but kind of overpriced, and i was kind of just in it for the al fresco dining. fine, what i was looking for, but not particularly memorable.

well last week when i went it was totally different. we ended up not even getting there until like 10:30 pm, which is way late for grandma (aka me) on a weeknight. when we get there, the place is pretty empty except for a table of drunk koreans (and one white girl) singing loudly and drunkenly to the giant flat screen karaoke mounted up in the back. i had no idea but it turns out this place is open until 2 am (except for weekends when it is open until 4 am) and basically the owner and his friends just get wasted, do karaoke, pass out, and then start it up again the next day for lunch. it was AWESOME.

the food was also way better than i had previously thought. maybe it was partly that i was about to gnaw off my arm from hunger but it was some of the best sushi i've had recently. it was just so fresh and rich and buttery. we got a variety of rolls and some pieces and it was all excellent. i really like the creativity in the rolls. patricia claims that dancing wasabi is the place to go for crazy interesting rolls (and she likes ando for just straight up good sushi). i haven't been to ando yet but never fear, it's on the list and i will write about it for you, my hordes of adoring readers.

anyway back to the rolls at dancing wasabi. they use all kinds of interesting ingredients to make them exciting. cool combinations of fish but also a lot of spiciness from various sauces and spices. i like things spicy so that is good for me but if you are not a fan of spice, you might want to stick to the non-chef specialty rolls.

the atmosphere was ok but i did get kind of tired of the super loud karaoke. of course, it was like midnight and i had to work the next day and i was really tired. so there was that. service was ok but the waitress kept stopping to sing and would then kind of ignore us for a while. but she was really nice and a good singer so we didn't really mind.

i definitely recommend dancing wasabi if you are in the mood for some very delicious and very creative sushi, and/or if you're up for some crazy korean karaoke. also, if you are hungry at 1 am there is really nowhere else to go in this city other than shanghai mama's (which sucks) and skyline (which even i get tired of sometimes).

mei

i went to mei in montgomery (i think) with my book club for dinner tonight. the book was harry potter #7. the food was delicious! beth had been there before and knew to reserve a secret room in the back for us.

the secret rooms are little private rooms for up to 6 people where you sit at floor level tables with these little bamboo mats. it was really private and nice. if you wanted to get it on in there, you totally could have, although that's kind of gross to think about seeing as how i ate raw fish in there. anyway.

(aside: montgomery is crazy weird suburban hell and i am happy i don't live there... it kind of freaks me out. however they do have good food there.)

i got the chirashi which was very good, except for the salmon roe which, like with sea urchin, i am just not a fan of and probably never will be no matter how hard i try. i just can't get over the texture. i always feel like i am popping pus bubbles in my mouth. bleah.

but other than that really good. i got salmon, tuna, whitefish, mackerel, octopus, egg, and shrimp. all very fresh and tasty. the rice was seasoned really well which is nice and unfortunately surprising when it happens around here. chirashi seafood variety comment: i would have preferred no octopus and more fish instead.

the others all got rolls which they enjoyed. beth knew about the secret tempura sweet potato roll which is not actually on the menu so you have to ask for it if you want it.

as for the service, i didn't notice our server at all so that must mean she was good.

all in all, some of the best sushi i've had in cincinnati. i do think that i might like teak a little better in terms of the quality of fish (salmon = more buttery, tuna = more flavorful) and the excitingness of the rolls, which is weird because i usually think that sushi at thai restaurants is more of an afterthought and not generally that good. but the awesomely seasoned chirashi rice at mei is definitely better than teak's, and mei's mackerel was exceptional.

i think my next sushi adventure will be ando... i keep hearing about it and i'm very excited to try it.