Repeats and a Promise

I haven't been going anywhere new for a while--that's my excuse.  I've been to the Wasabis on the east side every Friday for the last few weeks.  I even took a whole group there--I can't help that I need a sushi fix every week.  I'll tell you I've set on a couple of dishes as the perfect combo for the winter.  I can't remember the name of the dinner Japanese bento boxed meal.  It typically comes with tempura, fish or meat, pickles, sushi, shashimi, sweet fruit, and rice.  A bento is a lunch meal in a box (typically cold), while the dinner is a typically hot and cold mix.  To make one at Wasabis you just order the sushi combo A and one of the boxed dinner meals.  I like teriaki beef--ask for it medium rare and it comes close to a real Japanese dinner.  Wasabis could be more of a "yes" restaurant, but it is not bad.  For example, they won't make special rolls or allow mixtures of shashimi on their main shashimi set.  So, I'm stuck in a rut.  I like hot and cold especially for dinner in the winter and of course, I must have hot saki.  The Japanese culture is fantastic at keeping the hot and cold part of a meal in balance.

I also had steak tartar at the Candle Club again during Cigar Night.  I confirmed that a small brut Flexinet is the best with steak tartar and the Candle Club's steak tartar is one of the best.  I smoked a couple of high end Partagas that night and I'm smoking a Partagas number 10 right now.  Plus, the Candle Club does a great job making drinks just the way I like them.

I will be going to Oklahoma City soon and will try some dining there.  I hope to give a report on some new restaurants.  That's my promise.  I'll get to some other restaurants in Wichita soon--that's the plan.  Until them--great eating, drinking, and cigars.

Wasabi in Wichita

A Wasabi sushi restaurant opened up on the east side.  I went there with the regular copilot on Saturday night. 

We are fish and sushi snobs.  This is because my family was raised with fresh fish and the regular copilot loves fresh fish.  We live part time in Florida for goodness sakes.  In this modern era, you can get fresh fish in almost any large city in the USA, and Wichita has some great fish.  Until Kwon Court had to shut down, that was the best sushi in Wichita and likely in the Midwest.  There really wasn't a great sushi restaurant on the east side.  Now, Wasabi has put a branch in the east and it is excellent.  They've been open for about 10 days.

We went on Saturday and didn't need a reservation.  You usuallyneed a reservation for Wasabi in old town.  We were seated at the sushi bar, but they have lots of table space.  I like the sushi bar, the regular copilot, not so much.

I drank hot saki.  The brand was good and the saki was hot--hot is important.  The regular copilot drank a Saporo light.  I ordered the avocado salad (because I wanted to see what it was like).  The regular copilot ate a seaweed salad.  Both were excellent.  The dressing on the avocado salad was perfect.  They were both huge portions.

For the main dish, I had a chirashi sushi (bunch of raw fish on sushi rice--a junk box, the common Japanese sushi meal).  It included salmon, tuna, yellow tail, tomago, crab, and abachor tuna.  The regular copilot had the chef's choice sashimi.  We each ordered a spicy tuna hand roll and miso soup.  The fish portions were huge.  Even after the first blush, when the portion sizes decrease--if they are half, they will still be large.  The fish was very fresh and high quality.  We took loads home (because we had too much to eat in a single setting)--the fish was still great the next day.  The handrolls were excellent and the miso soup was good, but not great.

All in all, Wasabi is an excellent restaurant.  It is better than the old town location with a better ambiance and a very attentive staff.  We highly recommend it.