Since I landed in Chicago, I’ve been seriously craving sushi. I had sushi with my college roommates the first night I got here (some place in Evanston that was pretty good) and I made reservations for Kaze Sushi for Wednesday night with another friend. We were deciding between two sushi restaurants but people said Kaze Sushi was some of the best sushi they’d had in Chicago, so my friend and I decided to go to Kaze. We arrived a bit early (around 6pm) and the restaurant was completely empty. After being seated and looking through our menus, our waiter gave us a rundown of all of the specials and things that are really great on the menu. I decided to order the duck entree and six different types of rolls. The duck entree was brought out first:

The duck was surprisingly tender and well cooked in a white wine reduction with apples and raisins. At first I was a little iffy on the sauce because I’m not a fan of raisins in food, but then I realized it was actually really delicious with the duck (I even ate the sauce after the duck was finished!). The tempura shiitake mushrooms reminded me of carnival fries (same oily smell and a little tastier) and the sweet potato fries on top of the duck were crunchy but good. The boiled spinach was cold on one side and slightly warm on the other (the duck was keeping it warm), but overall, the dish wasn’t very hot/felt like it sat out a while before it was brought over to us. There were too many different temperatures in the food that it was kind of hard to stomach. My friend (who shall not be named for privacy reasons), was finishing up the meal when he thought he ate a hard piece of duck, but when he took it out of his mouth, he saw that it was a broken piece of plastic! Isn’t that absolutely TERRIBLE?!

After we alerted our waiter and he profusely apologized, he brought out our rolls - 6 different types of rolls including a dragon roll with salmon, a shrimp tempura roll, a negi hamachi roll, a spicy tuna roll, a spicy salmon roll, and a spicy tuna eel roll. Here’s a picture of three of the rolls:

And the other three:

My biggest complaint, which I mention in the video review, is that there isn’t enough fish in any of the rolls! The hamachi roll had TINY TINY pieces of hamachi (I couldn’t even call it a hamachi roll, I’d call it a ROLL OF RICE). I also had to send back the soft shell crab with salmon because the salmon was seriously rubbery and couldn’t be chewed through. The other rolls were fairly decent, except the shrimp tempura had too much batter on it and I could only taste the tempura, not the shrimp.

For dessert, we decided to share the black sesame flan:

My first question - why is black sesame flan GREEN?! Second question - why does it look like there are spider babies on the plate?! The flan tasted more like peanut butter than black sesame and was very creamy (as a random side note, my mom sometimes mixes black sesame with almonds and soybeans to make soy milk - it’s quite delicious if you drink it cold).

Kazi Sushi had a great open space and lively atmosphere, but it couldn’t make up for the sub-par food.

My video review:

Kaze Sushi Review from Grace Yang on Vimeo.

One of the best rewards for working hard is a great meal - it’s even better when the people you work for tell you to order anything you want and to not worry about the bill. After working on a project for six weeks (which seemed like six months), the manager of the project offered to take me and two others to dinner to show his appreciation for our hard work. SCORE! Since Morimoto is a pretty nice place to bring out of town guests, we decided to go there.

We started off with a small appetizer -a new take on fried rice:

Crispy and barely fried, it was very cute but not memorable (good thing it was free!).

I ordered for the table (since I’m the one that writes the reviews!) and we decided to go with a couple appetizers, sushi and sashimi, and some cooked dishes. The first appetizer to come out was the tuna pizza:

The tuna pizza comes on a flatbread that resembles a saltine (sans salt), cilantro, tuna, and a spicy wasabi mayo. I liked the different textures of the pizza and the table agreed that it was a good order.

Our next appetizer was the foie gras on a cooked oyster:

The thick cut of foie gras came on an oyster that was barely cooked and a healthy dose of teriyaki sauce. Another shot:

The foie gras was rich and decadent, but a little overkill with the teriyaki. Too much sauce is never a good thing.

I also ordered a couple pieces of sashimi in case our appetizers weren’t enough for everyone:

I’m a huge fan of tamago (but it’s very hard to mess up tamago - it’s an egg custard omelet that’s very rich and very easy to recreate). The fatty tuna was very meaty and the yellowtail was also a big hit.

An order of sushi before our main dishes arrived:

The spicy tuna roll was my favorite (especially since their spicy mayo is great)…but I don’t think the rolls/sashimi at Morimoto si that much better than any other sushi joint in NY. Onto the main dishes!! (although most of us were already full after all of the appetizers and sushi).

Our first dish was a braised black cod in a ginger reduction:

The cod was a little plain, but had enough sauce to make up for the taste of the fish. Everyone at the table enjoyed the dish, but I wouldn’t order it again.

Our next main course was Duck duck duck, a specialty of Morimoto’s:

The duck duck duck comes on a flaky croissant that’s brushed with foie gras (how rich!) and has duck and green onion inside. Duck duck duck was my favorite dish of the night; an abundance of greasy duck, flaky dough, and fresh flavor from the green onion. I wasn’t a fan of the dipping sauces (too pungent) but there was enough flavor from the duck grease that you didn’t even NEED to dip the sandwich in red miso.

Our third entree was the angry chicken:

My least favorite dish of the night. The dish tasted like it was out of a PF Chang’s; the chicken was dry, there was too much Styrofoam all around it, and there was too much sauce on the chicken and vegetables. Definitely not a dish to EVER order again.

After filling up on so many delicious appetizers and main courses, we had to indulge in some desserts. We started with a Chocolate Pecan Brownie with espresso ice cream:

The brownie tasted like it just came out of the oven and when eaten with a scoop of ice cream, tasted like a party in my mouth. Very delicious!

We also ordered Earl grey creme brulee:

This was my favorite dessert of the night. The earl grey tea was a very subtle flavor (moreso in the after taste) but the creme brulee was really well done and very delicious.

Overall, it was a solid meal at Morimoto (although my dining companion, Ryan, disagreed). Next time, I’ll order more sushi/sashimi and less cooked dishes (I don’t think they’re THAT great) and definitely MORE dessert!

How to get to Morimoto:

Morimoto
88 10th Avenue
New York, NY 100024
212-989-8883

Paradise Moon, located in Newport on the Levee, is a pan-Asian restaurant I visited the first time I went to Cincinnati. I was there for a Procter and Gamble event and really enjoyed the food - we had an assortment of appetizers and other dishes and everything was pretty good (this was back in 2004). Since I was recently in Cincinnati for work, I thought it would be fun to visit the place again - Vikkie and I drove to Newport on the Levee (which is technically in Kentucky but the drive is only 10 minutes) and we decided to eat at Paradise Moon, even though it was completely deserted (the first sign that we should’ve left).

We started off with an appetizer of cold noodles:

I took one bite of the noodles and immediately knew that the meal was going to be sub-par, at best. The noodles were overcooked (were the cooks Asian? If they were, their mothers apparently didn’t teach them how to cook noodles) and the sauce was simply soy sauce. We should’ve cancelled our order all together, but since we ordered sushi, we decided to stick it out.

I ordered the spicy tuna roll and tuna with crab:

For both of the rolls, the fish wasn’t fresh, the nori was too soft, and the rice wasn’t even sushi rice (I think it was just regular rice with too much water used when preparing it so it just stuck together).

Vikkie didn’t have a bad experience with her rolls (they had some weird names that aren’t worth looking up online):

But I tried a piece and didn’t find it appetizing.

Seriously, you can buy better sushi rolls at a freaking WHOLE FOODS. Also, it was pretty expensive (around $15/roll) and the fish definitely wasn’t fresh. If you’re in the area, definitely skip out on Paradise Moon - the food’s crappy and it’s definitely not worth it!

After reading numerous positive reviews about Tomoe Sushi, Chris, my brother, and I decided to wait in line for some of their delicious fish. Their restaurant is even mentioned in my book, Eat New York, but since it’s in Chinese, I don’t know whether it’s a positive review or not (some of the reviews aren’t that favorable, yet they’re still mentioned in the book, so, you never know). The place is right next to Lupa in Noho and always has lines out the door (the space is really small in general). We waited about 15 minutes before we were seated and I was really eager to order since I hadn’t eaten since lunch in Philadelphia. The prices were a little steep (actually, they might have been the same as Sushi Yasuda and Morimoto, but there was no ambiance and we were seated so close to the other tables that we could hear what people two tables down were talking about. Since we already waited for a table, there was no use in backing out, so we decided to go all out and order the Sushi Deluxe (10 pieces of sushi, half a tuna roll, and half of a yellowtail roll):

The fish was definitely fresh (and the pieces were really long), and I thought all of the fish was very tasty. No complaints from my side!

My brother ordered Spicy tuna and regular tuna rolls:

One problem with some sushi restaurants here is that when they make spicy tuna with this weird spice that tastes more like something that belongs at a Korean restaurant than a Japanese restaurant. Does anyone think that, too? The tuna rolls at Tomoe, however, were really tasty and the spiciness didn’t taste like the Korean red paste.

We also ordered Yaki soba noodles:

Chris likes Yaki soba noodles a lot, so we decided to order the noodles as well. I wasn’t a huge fan of them at first (maybe it was the cabbage?) but the taste grew on me.

The meal was about $70 for the three of us, which isn’t expensive when you go to a sushi restaurant, but we also ordered one noodle dish, which is a lot cheaper than ordering sushi. The decor was really shabby and the place actually looks really crappy inside, so if you’re looking for somewhere with ambiance, go elsewhere. I wouldn’t put Tomoe Sushi on my short list of favorite sushi places, but I’d probably go back again.

How to get to Tomoe Sushi:

Tomoe Sushi
172 Thompson Street between Bleecker and Houston
New York, NY 10012
212-777-9346

On Saturday after dropping my mom off at the airport, I headed to Bond St. Sushi with Joe, Felicia, Chris, and Jason. Joe heard good things about the place through coworkers, so I figured it would be pretty good for dinner. We started off with some edamame:

Chris and I decided to order one main dish and then some rolls since there wasn’t too much on the menu that interested us, plus I read reviews saying you should stay away from the “special rolls” since they are super expensive and not worth the money. We ordered the spicy yellowtail roll as well as the spicy tuna roll:

I thought it was odd that they didn’t put the spicy mayo directly onto the sushi, but I guess you can control the portions, which is always good. The spicy yellowtail was not good (maybe I just don’t like yellowtail? I don’t know, but it definitely was not worth ordering) and the spicy tuna, in Chris’ opinion, tasted like it was just the leftover pieces of tuna that they didn’t want to waste. We ordered the chilean sea bass with a miso sauce as well:

We got a huge chunk and it was a really tasty piece of fish. I usually don’t eat fish skin, but for some reason, I thought the sauce and skin combination was really delicious. Felicia, my friend from high school/college, ordered the cod and found it to be tasteless. I guess if I were to go again (which I probably won’t), I’d probably order the chilean sea bass since the sushi was pretty disappointing. Jason ordered two rolls and was still hungry afterwards, so we decided to head to Soho Park for beers and french fries. In a previous post about Soho Park, I mentioned that I felt like we got the bottom of the barrel fries since they were so small, but apparently, that’s how their fries are. BOO! Me and Chris (after half a glass of wine):