The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Out in Brooklyn last night looking at a potential apartment (no go - nice building but I’m not sure where they got their 1200 sq/ft measurement from, the place was tiny!), but we love the hood (cobble hill) so it only made sense to try some local food. I was in the mood for sushi, and thanks to the internet on my iPhone and a recalled recommendation from my friend Craig who lives in the neighborhood, we headed over to Osaka.

The restaurant itself is very small and cute, with cute design elements (which really goes further than most japanese restaurants (where I’d say that in general decor even in many high quality ones is lacking to say the least)) including tatami mat seating in the front of the restaurant (where we ended up sitting after our failed attempt to sit in their quite lovely back garden (it started to rain)), although they could sorely have used some air conditioning as it was uncomfortably hot inside.

The menu had a lot of interesting sounding cooked dishes, and a lot of Nobu style appetizers (new style sashimi, yellowtail & jalapeno appetizer, seared tuna salad…) but we decided to go the fairly traditional route, Eleanor got their sushi bar omakase special (9 pieces of sashimi, 5 of sushi and two rolls) and I got their sashimi special (18 pieces of sashimi! and a red river roll(spicy squid wrapped in tuna instead of rice), both of which incredibly cheap for the amount of food at $30 and $29 respectively.

We started the meal with the largest bowl of edamame I’ve ever seen. And I mean at least twice as big as I’ve ever been served before. Thankfully this was not a case of quantity over quality, as it also happened to be some of the best I’ve had. Incredibly fresh and flavorful, I could easily see myself stopping in just for that and a beer if I lived in the neighborhood.

Watching the other tables around us eating, I realized we had over-ordered significantly. The pieces of sushi people were eating were almost as large as I’ve ever seen (yama in Manhattan would be the largest, and tomoe (a great sushi place near my office) were about the same size) - and I had 18 on the way - yikes!

Indeed when they laid the (quite nice white with textured decorations) plates in front of us I nearly cried at the amount of food in front of me. The plate consisted of 3 slices of tuna, 3 slices of bluefin toro, 3 slices of kampachi (baby yellowtail), 3 slices of salmon, a large serving of sea urchin, 3 slices of a whitefish that I don’t remember what it was, and 3 pieces of the red river roll. The fish itself was quite fresh, and the bluefin toro was probably the most marbled I’ve ever seen (and I order toro whenever I go for sushi, it’s one of my favorite things), but it was all too cold which leeched a lot of the flavor, and as I’d seen from a distance the pieces were obscenely big.

Thankfully, Eleanor thought to use my side of warm rice to warm the fish up, which helped bring out the flavor. I enjoyed all of the fish with the exception of the whitefish which I found bland, and the regular tuna which in my mind never stands up well served next to toro. It’s like eating a McDonald’s burger alongside one from Shake Shack (for those of you who don’t know, it’s probably the best burger in NY). The red river roll was quite interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever had spicy squid before, and I quite enjoyed the texture of the chopped up squid.

Now I’m all for value, and I got a gigantic plate of high quality fish for a very reasonable price, but sushi and sashimi are supposed to be single bite foods. These pieces were 2 bites minimum. A large part of the sushi art is not just serving fresh fish, but how the chef cuts it, as texture is incredibly important. When you have to bite a piece in half, I feel it takes away from that textural aspect of the experience. It shouldn’t take all that much more time to serve the exact same amount of fish, just cut smaller, so you get 6 bite sized slices instead of 3 gigantic ones. Since that’s the case, I have to imagine the reason they serve such big pieces is because it’s what the customers like. The supersizing of America continues.

On a final note, despite my dislike of over-sized sashimi, it’s quite fresh, high quality over-sized sashimi. And it’s quite affordable giant sashimi - our total bill was under $100 with drinks, which in this city is a pretty cheap meal out. And on top of that, it’s in Brooklyn, which is not known for it’s wealth of good sushi restaurants. While I can’t say I would ever make the trip out to Brooklyn to go there, I wouldn’t mind having it as my neighborhood sushi restaurant at all.

B-

p.s. sorry for the lack of pictures, I once again forgot to break out the iPhone and take pictures of what we speak and eat. Still new at this, stick with us!