Opening Review of Sakura Sushi - Lunch Options on Spring Garden

Looking to avoid the afternoon slump that can hit an office-worker like me who has overloaded on lunch, I was pleased to see Sakura opening up near my office on the 1500 block of Spring Garden.  There were more than two dozen great looking options for the lunch roll special, so I decided to try them out on opening week.



It's a clean & tidy little spot, not unlike most of the sushi joints closer in towards downtown, with a small bar that seats about 5 and maybe a half-dozen tables.  In the weeks following their opening I'm pleased to see that they always have a healthy lunch crowd and are hustling out the orders.

I opted for the 2-roll Lunch special for $7.50; two of your choice with a cup of miso soup and a simple salad.

I enjoyed my lunch outside on a weirdly warm day - here's the spread pictured above.

I've kept to the more standard fare; salmon, yellowtail and standard tuna. My colleagues have tried rolls like the tofu skins and found them pleasant.  The soup was a nice pick-me-up and while the salad dressing was a zesty ginger, overall it reminds me of  'Japanese Steakhouse Salad' I would have as a kid, meant to tide you over before the knife-show...simple iceberg-cuke-tomato.

I haven't tried Domo yet, around the corner down on 18th and Callowhill, but I'd definitely put this on the map if, for some weird reason, you find yourself around N. Broad & Spring Garden and in need of sushi.

Bye Bye BYOB @ Fat Salmon

Spider Roll - Softshell Crab & Lettuce

I had heard that Fat Salmon, the novelty sushi bar on 7th & Walnut, was about to start-up it's license to sell alcohol on Sept 1st, so we took a few summer brews and a bottle of wine along last Friday night the celebrate the waning days of a great BYOB situation.

After happily uncorking our wine bottle, the waitress confirmed that this was the last weekend for BYOB dining.

After drifting around the menu of signature rolls, we decided to do some research on a few of the rolls that included cooked components in case we wanted to do sushi with any less adventurous diners in the future.

The shumai were just as good as I had hoped after hearing about them in the Adam Erace's review of Fat Salmon. Tender skins, surrounding juicy nuggets of shrimp..these were so tasty on their own they didn't even need the spicy sauce that accompanied them.

The seaweed salad was your basic affair...a decent side with enough sesame flavor and seasoning to break up the sometimes heavier flavors of Fat Salmon's over-the-top rolls.

Miss Sake Bomb-eel, avocado & crunchy on top-lightly cooked salmon with tartar sauce

Miss Sake Bomb was a study in contrast...a rich eel & avocado roll topped with lightly broiled salmon & a dill-spiked tartar sauce. I was really hesitant about tartar sauce as a condiment - it conjured up memories of greasy fishsticks - but the dill and pickle were pronounced enough to balance out any over mayonnaise-y nastiness. 

Mr. French Kiss -crab stick with masago, fried shrimp & tartar sauce

Next up, Mr. French Kiss. Having gotten over my apprehension of the tartar sauce, we tried out a roll that featured crab-stick and crystalline-crunchy masago with a topping of tempura-fried shrimp & tartar sauce. There was a claim of bacon & onion in the tempura, which I didn't detect, and the shrimp itself seemed more breaded than tempura-fried, but nevertheless, it was a crunchy and savory addition.

Midori - cucumber, shitake, oshinko, gourd & burdock

We also had an order of a vegetarian roll, the Midori - a combo of pickled vegetables, gourd, burdock and shitake. We had never tried these veggies and ordered it more for the acidity that pickled veg can brig to balance out what was quickly becoming a very heavy sushi session, what with all the fried preparations.

I will definitely miss the 'affordability' of Fat Salmon in BYOB mode - out total check came to less than $50 - but the menu is broad enough that I can see coming back for more traditional sushi or for the flashy house-creations.

Japanese Omakase @ RO-ZU

We had heard from an acquaintance that RO-ZU, a new Japanese arrival to the BYOB scene at 7th & Bainbridge, was serving up some excellent product. That recommendation, combined with some positive press convinced us to try the omakase, fixed-price meal where Chef Todd Dae Kulper serves up a series of dishes based on your interests - all you have to do is select the price-point that you'd like to pay per-person, have a seat at the bar, sit back & enjoy.

We went on a Saturday with some last minute reservations being made after I'd read that you should call ahead for the omakase. RO-ZU was busy but not packed when we arrived at 9PM to take our place at the bar.

We selected a modest $50 omakase, but you could go to $65 or splash out with the lux $80 - I think that's where the really wild stuff starts to come into play and the chef let us know that if we called a few days ahead to reserve the $80 tasting, they would have some really stunning product ready for your dinner. Chef Todd also mentioned that the omakase never repeats if he can help it and every time you come back, he'll take you a little further into his repertoire.

Chef Todd first performed a quick interview to find out our likes and dislikes and then set to work deftly shucking two tiny oysters...Kumamoto I believe. Wrapped in a thin blanket of big-eye tuna, topped with a micro-dice of jalapeño and resting in a small dribble of a tangy sauce (ponzu?), the amuse was a great palette opener, with the fresh oyster's hint of salinity livening up the tuna.

Next up was a dish of Scottish salmon, dressed with tomato & sea salt and served with a citrus-splashed salad of tomato & red onion. The salmon was succulent...you can see the banana leaf garnish showing through the translucent flesh. This was Elizabeth's favorite dish, mostly due to the quality of the salmon and the clean flavors of the tomato.

Here we have what I call the 'Hot Tuna' dish, a serving of yellowfin tuna topped with a hot pepper ring and garnished with fried garlic & shallot. Chef Todd fired up the blowtorch to superheat a bowl of oil that was then drizzled over the fish, releasing the heat locked in those pepper rings and lightly searing the fish. Combined with the rich sesame oil and fried garlic & shallot crisps, the heat from the pepper was pleasant and not overpowering, with the tuna itself being a good texture and quality.

The only thing THIS dish was missing was a slice of bread to sop-up the sauce...wait, wrong cuisine! The big-eye tuna was served with a daikon slaw and a dice of sweet onions. The sauce was king on this dish, a butter & yuzu combination that had been bubbling away on the one tiny burner behind the bar. It amped up the play of the deep flavors from the last dish, building a great progression from light, clean flavors to the deep and complex.

We've reached the end of the progression here with grilled eel & asparagus, served over a sweet sauce. This was one of the dishes that I had been looking forward to after reading the review from the Inquirer - the article had made mention of how the sauces were all house-made in small batches with one in particular being made from roasted eel bones. The switch from cool fish & warm sauce to cool sauce & warm fish was a clever switch-up as well...the pleasant smell of the eel searing under the burner of a tiny oven behind the counter replaced the smell of butter & ponzu hovering around the bar.



We thought we were finished and much to our surprise we were greeted with a huge plate of nigiri.

Chef Todd had overheard us talking about the contents of the 'fish locker' at the bar, pointing out the Spanish mackerel fillet in particular, and had decided to set us up witha nice progression containing 4 different types of mackerel.

Left row is big-eye tuna, Scottish salmon, fluke, and hamachi. On the right Spanish Mackerel, kohada/gizzard shad, blue mackerel, and Iwashi/Japanese sardine. We really enjoyed his description of each fish, how it's used and what makes it special within the cuisine.

We finished the omakase over a warm bowl of smoky Shiitake soup. I was taken back by the flavor and asked if there was a type of tea that gave it such a strong 'campfire' flavor. The punch of smokiness came from a type of cured fish flake that is heavily smoked and then shaved. It sounded like a type of bonito but this was the strongest I had ever sampled...not so strong that it was unpleasant though.

I'd definitely recommend making your reservations for the bar if, like us, you're new to the cuisine and are interested in the preparation & thought behind these cooking with these ingredients, as the chefs were very friendly and worked the meal around your interests. Being a new business I hope that they do well...they do a lunch service too that sounds good and may yield up some better pictures...my camera really isn't handling the night-dining too well these days.