Tsunami: Destination Sushi in Alamo Square
Written: Jun 26 '03
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Pros: Spider Rolls, decor
Cons: Some special rolls are not great, yet overly pricey
The Bottom Line: The folks at Tsunami got a lot right, real quick. It's instantly one of the better sushi joints in town
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| Mr.Eyore's Full Review: Tsunami Sushi and Sake Bar |
Is there anything in this world more perfect than a perfect Spider Roll? Fat, in-season, soft-shell crab, so big they have to manhandle it into oblivion just to fit it into a seaweed and rice disk small enough to put in your mouth. Dripping with nasty, mustard-colored tomalley and guts. Salty and warm, wrapped tightly in a two-inch cylinder with tart, crispy daikon and mushy avocado, just past al dente rice and the bite of wasabi underneath.
Tsunami Sushi Bar is going to benefit unfairly here from the fact that soft-shell crab is in season – in fact, not just in season, but at the height of the season in a very good year for crab in the Bay Area. I will judge them forevermore by the scrumptious, almost lobster-tasting soft-shell crab rolls they been giving me lately. It’s been the best I’ve ever had.
And I gotta be honest: I intend to rate them unfairly for other reasons too. Tsunami Sushi is located on the same property as Café Abir, the coffee shop and magazine stand that has, for seven years, been a regular part of my daily life. Café Abir has the best coffee I’ve had anywhere, roasted daily on the premises and sold by the pound or the cup at prices that make you want to kick Starbucks in the balls. And it’s owned by two guys who I think might be brothers, and who are about the nicest people on the planet – always smiling, good corporate citizens, cognizant of the fact that their business is a major, major part of the neighborhood. Around New Years, they walk around their store, looking for regulars to give bottles of champaign to, to thank them for being a part of their community. During the day, they walk around looking for ways to make their shop, and their corner, a better, more inviting, more hospitable, more attractive place to hang out. I don’t even know their names, after seven years, so I suck. But when they see me coming in, if there’s a new person working behind the counter, I see them whisper to the new person that when they see me, they should make up a large iced coffee, no ice, in a paper cup, not a plastic one, with a half inch on top for cream. And they smile and ask me how work is going. I like them.
The property, technically, has three different rooms. The coffee shop and the magazine stand have both been a success since the day they opened. But the third room has been a revolving door of failures. It was an organic grocery store for a while, in a neighborhood that already has two other organic grocery stores. It was a cybercafe, briefly. But that didn’t work much, once everyone’s home computers started coming with cd burners. It’s been a few other things too, that I never even looked in to see. But that doesn’t mean I don’t root for the boys. I keep hoping something they put in that space will be a winner. And it sure seems like maybe they’ve finally done it with Tsunami sushi bar.
While the great majority of San Francisco Sushi Bars seem to adhere to a strictly utilitarian, almost cafeteria-style, design aesthetic, with an occasional nod to Japan via a random shinjo screen, Tsunami is a warm and inviting space. Clean lines and nice hardwoods dominate, softened by dim lighting, small plants and overstuffed seats. (although, one corner of the bar features a rather grotesque jar of live, 2 inch rock crabs, scrambling over and on top of one another, legs and arms akimbo, like frat-boys at Limp Bizkit show.)
On each of my two visits, the salads I started off with were phenomenal. The Sunimono Salad I had on my first visit cost $4.00 (sort of a disappointment, since most restaurants hand these out for free as soon as a patron sits down) but was about as good as any I’ve had. Served in a cone of seaweed over a bed of pickled gobo, the thinly sliced cucumber was perfectly dressed and as crunchy as could be. On my second visit, I was given a delicious salad of sliced, cooked squid with a very light vinegar dressing and paper thin shavings of red onion.
On my first visit, I asked the sushi chef whether he recommended the maguro or the albacore. The maguro looked incredible. Candy-apple red and glistening with oily fish-sweat. But I’ve learned in this town that sometimes the albacore will surprise you with its flavorful, soft gummability, so it seemed worth asking. The chef asked how I felt about fatty tuna (toro), and of course I told him that if that was his recommendation, that’s what I would go for. But I’d been upsold on a mediocre piece of fish with ornamentation. Instead of the $3.95 jewel I had in my sights, I was served a $7.00 piece of pale pink tuna that he took a blowtorch to (literally) and coated in scallion. It was fine – most decent toro is – but I would have preferred two orders of the beautiful red ahi over the glorified, luke-warm quasi-special I ended up with.
The Unagi (Eel) was fine, but nowhere near what it should have been. It was sort of bland, and not in the least crispy around the edges. The California Roll was similarly disappointing (yeah, back off, sushi geeks. I don’t usually order California Rolls either, but this was for science, alright?): The cucumber was thick cut instead of julienned, which I didn’t care for as much. Likewise, the full daikon radish (instead of the thin slices most sushi bars use) doesn’t work that well in the spicy tuna roll, giving it a hard crunchiness that doesn’t match up well with the diced maguro. But at least they use real crab and good tuna in their rolls, instead of the krab and tuna gristle that too many restaurants use.
Like a lot of sushi bars in big cities nowadays, Tsunami seeks to make a killing on high end sakes, which I’m still not buying into. Call me ethnocentric if you want. Tell me I don’t have a sophisticated palate, that I’m brutish and narrow-minded, but sake is sake as far as I’m concerned, and I can’t taste a whole hell of a lot of difference between a polished $14.00 Daiginjo and the $7.00 crap they stick in the microwave and serve me for sake bombs alongside a tall bottle of Sapporo. Cold, hot, filtered, unfiltered ... I don’t really care. But if you do, I suppose you’ll be interested in the fact that Tsunami serves about 10,000 different kinds of sake, in bottles and in shots as part of tastings, plus a bunch of “sake cocktails” for $4.50 apiece.
All in all, I liked Tsunami. It’s not a bargain – particularly given the outrageous prices of some of the run-of-the-mill special rolls – but then, there are few real sushi bargains anywhere in San Francisco. It’s a nice, needed addition to the Alamo Square neighborhood, and it’s good enough that it’s worth a trip from other neighborhoods.
Recommended:
Yes
Kid Friendliness: No
Vegetarian Friendly: Yes
Best Suited For: Friends
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Epinions.com ID:
Mr.Eyore
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Reviews written: 129
Trusted by: 299 members
About Me:
I come for the pervasive sense of elitist self-importance and semi-witty expressions of faux camaraderie
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