Sushi Tour KC

Here's the dirt on the 2016 sushi tour.  This time we went to KC.  We were supposed to fly, but the weather was poop and supposed to be poop for the entire weekend.  We drove out on Saturday to KC and the Ambassador Hotel.  I wanted a Ritz-Carlton, but there aren't any in KC anymore.  The Ambassador is supposed to be the best in KC, and I think it might be.  Everyone greeted us with a smile.  The staff were all friendly.  The rooms were similar to the high end hotels I've stayed in Europe and Asia.  The Reserve restaurant is excellent.  They will give you a ride from the hotel to anywhere important in KC.  They say five miles, but they took us to the Plaza and back as well as the Art Museum and the WWI Museum.  The Ambassador is middle priced but top end for amenities.  It really is a boutique hotel.

The first step on the sushi tour was Mr. Le's.  This comes up as the number two sushi spot in KC.  I'd say it is the number one for quality and price.  It's a hole in the wall on Parvin.  The service was good, the location isn't for any special occasion, but the sushi makes the trip worthwhile.  We had spicy tuna hand rolls, the combination of nigiri and shashimi, and their yellow tail carpaccio.  Hot sake of course.  The shashimi was in large chunks, and the nigiri was very nice with a classical but nice flavor to the rice.  Everything was tip top fresh.  Try it--it is likely the best sushi in KC.
 

We went to the WWI Museum in KC.  History buffs you gotta visit.  It is supposed to be the only WWI museum in the USA.  Really good bargain and museum.

Next on the Sushi tour was Nara NeoJapanese downtown.  The Ambassador gave us a ride to the restaurant.  The atmosphere is modern and the feel is metropolitan.  We had their vegetable rolls,  special roll, some Nigiri, and spicy tuna hand rolls.  The service was good but a little busy.  I made reservations with open table.  I recommend reservations.  They were busy and others had to wait--we didn't.  Nara didn't really have anything special that the Neo kind of promised. The sushi was excellent and fresh.  hey handled our requests.  The sushi rice wasn't standard.   wouldn't call it number one, but it i definitely a hopping place and a fun restaurant.  No negatives and the prices were good.  They have Saporo on tap.
   

We went to the Art Museum the next day.  Highly recommended.

For lunch, I had open table reservations for Kona Grill.  This is a chain, but we found it an excellent restaurant during our Dallas tour.  It didn't disappoint.  They have perfect sake bombs with the big Kirins, light or regular.  We ate the yellow tail carpaccio and the tuna tower.  The yellow tail is one of their signature small plates--you gotta try it.  It is wonderful.  The tuna tower is excellent and slightly neutral.  Kona Grill is a perfect lunch venue.  The service was excellent.  No disappointment and very flavorful.  The sushi quality was excellent.


Dinner was at Drunken Fish. This is also a chain.  We walked from the Ambassador.  Drunken Fish is in the Power and Light District of KC.  I had Open Table reservations and we came late, but got right in.  I had the Teriyaki Beef with fried rice.  The fried rice was my request. At first they balked, but the server made the restaurant a "yes" experience by figuring out how to make it happen.  We also had a spicy tuna hand roll and a Drunken Fish roll.  They threw in another spicy tuna roll--impressive.  They also have Sake bombs, but more like Irish bombs.  We had the Saporo, also on tap, and the Nama cold sake.  The place was metro and upscale but not fancy.  Food quality was good and the sushi was great.  I'd go again.  The server made the experience very good.

All in all, we had a great sushi tour.  All the places we visited had great to excellent sushi. No complaints.

By the way, shopping at the Plaza was fun--lots of guy and gal places to check out.  Oh, I should mention, we had drinks with some friends at Reserve--they make a mean martini.

Dallas Sushi Tour - Kona Grill

We went on a sushi tour to check out the best sushi restaurants in Dallas Texas.  We only had time to check out the top three.  We perhaps picked a poor weekend for a sushi tour, but we had a great time.

Our first stop was to take N17979 (Tammy Lamb) from Wichita to McKinney Airport on the outskirts of Dallas.  We had a rental car waiting us, so we went car to car with no TSA involved.

From McKinney we headed for Kona Grill.  We had a reservation through Open Table for 1200.  We really didn't need a reservation, but we should have.  Kona Grill was outstanding.  The restaurant is in a mall and has an outside seating area.  The seating was very nice.

We were impressed from the beginning when we could order saki bombs from the menu.  They were Kirin and Kirin light in 22 oz. bottles each with a small container of hot saki.  Talk about a great start to lunch.  The Kirin was chilled nicely and the saki was heated well.  In an open courtyard seating under the trees, the spot was idyllic.

The menu at Kona Grill is a mixed polopolesian and sushi.  I chose the restaurant because of its ratings and because it was the only nice place with sushi open for lunch on the 4th of July.  Kona Grill isn't rated in the top five or ten for Dallas, but it should be.  For the purist, Kona might not be the best, but we had a taste of Southwestern shashimi that will bring us back next time.

We were sharing shashimi and sushi for the weekend, so we tried the jalapeno yellowtail and the jalapeno salmon from the shashimi menu.  We also ordered spicy tuna hand-rolls, and tuna and eel nigiri. 

The shashimi was excellent.  It wasn't classic, but the fish was fresh and the spices were natural and not overwhelming to the fish.  The yellow tail had a piece of jalapeno and cilantro on top.  It was excellent.  The salmon had a puree of jalapeno on top and something tasty in the middle.  The presentation was beautiful.  The nigiri was classic.  The spicy tuna hand-rolls were pretty typical.  They were surprisingly not too spicy.  The birth-day girl is on a search for the perfect spicy tuna hand-roll.  To her, that means chunks or slices of tuna with hot sesame oil and other spices--she'll know it when she tastes it.  It was the way one of our favorite sushi places did it before it shut down.

Kona Grill was a great start to our Dallas sushi tour.  We will return.     

Yamoto Fort Walton Beach

I'm going to lose track of all the places I've been eating, but I'll try to keep up and keep you apprised.  I've been going to Yamoto for 15 years or so.  It is a Sushi and Hibachi Japanese style restaurant on the Eglin Parkway in Fort Walton Beach.  The sushi is the best, but you won't go wrong with the Hibachi.  The prices are home town and not vacation subscription.

We ate at the Hibachi and had a great chef.  I had the Hibachi steak and a spicy tuna hand roll.  The Hibachi was less than $20 and the food was overwhelming.  It was good quality.  The spicy tuna hand roll was perfect with firm fresh tuna and a nice spicy sauce.  I want another one right now--that's how good it was.  I think I'll go for the sushi next time and tempura to check that out.

No one had a bad meal and the company was pleasant.  Even better, Yamotos is really trying hard to create some atmosphere, all their waitresses wore Yukatas with sashes--kind of fake Kimonos, but most Americas won't notice the difference.  The effect was nice.  Yamotos is a great restaurant.

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.

Sushi - Sumos 4 November

I intend this blog to be an occasional blog--I don't want to write on it every day, but I did have a dining experience on Friday.  I took my wife to Sumos for sushi.

They don't accept reservations, but we didn't need them even though the place was full.  It's a Japanese hibachi style restaurant sometimes called a chop-chop house.  The kind where they cook your meal as an entertainment.

We had sushi--that's the point.  I love raw fish and meat--the problem of world traveling.  And we love sushi.  I was disappointed.  The restaurant was crowded and it is loud.  My late cousin designed it, but they need to do something about the noise.  Simple Japanese half opening coverings and banners on the walls would help, but that's the engineer in me coming out.  The service was very good.

We started with a tempura appetizer.  It was nicely presented and well done--a little greasy, but tasty.  Our main complaint is that it didn't come with the usually tempura dipping sauce, but rather a ranch-like dressing and sweet and sour sauce.  We didn't ask for tempura dipping sauce--we should have.  I had a hot sake that wasn't very hot and my wife had a Sapporo light (Japanese beer) that wasn't very cold.

We both ordered a seaweed salad.  She didn't like the cucumbers in the salad and the dressing could have been a little stronger.  We also had miso soup.  The miso was too strong, but the soup was hot and presented properly.  We both also ordered a spicy tuna hand roll (a conically wrapped maki (roll)).  That was very good, but we could tell they used the older tuna--that's typical in many places. 

My wife ordered sushimi (raw fish).  She received tuna, salmon, and yellow tail.  I had sushi pairs and ordered unagi, salmon, firecracker yellow tail, and a special tuna.  Mine was okay.  The salmon was smoked when I ordered sake (raw salmon) and I had a small bone in the unagi (cooked freshwater eel).  My wife's sushimi was good, but the yellow tail appeared a little dull and her salmon didn't seem to be sushi grade.  I tasted it.  She also found a bone in the salmon--that's an indicator.  None of the fish smelled fishy--that's a good sign.  We don't touch any sushi that smells fishy.

So, all in all, the sushi wasn't that great, but like I said, the service was good.  We'll probably not try it again for a while.  In Wichita, the options for great sushi decreased significantly with the closing of Kwan Court which was one of the best sushi restaurants in the country.