Spicy Tuna

Today's entry in the restaurant review section is from dinner at Zono Sushi. It's located on Lake, between Del Mar and Cordova, so it is a very short walk for us and one of the places we like to go to. Both the sushi bar and the tables there have great service, and today we sat at a table. My order was for the dinner combination: beef steak teriyaki and vegetable tempura, with an extra order of spicy tuna cut rolls from the sushi bar. What followed was an excellent dinner, i'll describe each item in roughly the order it was eaten.

Edamame: A bowl is brought just after the drinks when eating at the table (rather than sushi bar). This was perhaps the weakest link in tonight's meal. If I were to compare the size and quality of the edamame, it would be to Kabuki's offering, which is usually hot with sea salt on the outside and huge soy beans (steroid-juiced?). We were served what looked like pretty normal soy beans. Some sort of scrawny, and not really any specialness to them. They were good, but just not quite the polished component which I've sometimes seen elsewhere.

Miso soup: Served extremely hot, in a bowl perfect for sipping. I can't stress enough how the serving temperature affects miso soup, even when way too hot it can be allowed to cool down, but if it's lukewarm it just doesn't taste as good. This was excellent miso soup, lots of particulate in the broth which made neat patterns while sipping, and a scattering of the tofu and seaweed which adds flavor.

Spicy tuna cut rolls: This is a particular favorite of mine, and something which I'll order from every sushi place I go to in order to compare the myriad ways in which it can be served. There are three main components which tend to vary for this dish: The consistency and composition of the actual spicy tuna mixture, the flavor and type of spice used in said mixture, and the extra garnishing and presentation of the rolls. I should probably expand on this subject in a seperate post, but as I only analyze these pieces as I'm eating and then file (later) an overall assessment of how much I liked the type, it's hard for me to actually compare with past selections as this will be the first time I've recorded the actual components. The spicy tuna cut rolls at Zono are one of my particular favorite types. The spicy tuna mixture is excellent: no hint of mayonnaise (which typically is used as a binding element and conveyor of the spicing), excellent and generous amounts of tuna, and a solid consistency with just enough porousness to allow the wasabi/soy sauce mixture to seep into it. I don't have a good word to explain the flavor of the spice, other than it is the usual flavor used for spicy tuna. This version was not extremely hot, but had a solid spice heat that built up over repeated exposure. The wasabi in the soy sauce complemented this nicely with a small flash of instant heat that quickly died off only to leave the realization that the background level of heat had risen pleasantly. Finally, the only addition to the spicy tuna rolls were finely cut pieces of cucumber in the roll, which added a fresh crunch to the roll which I liked. Overall, an excellent spicy tuna roll and one of my favorites out of any sushi place I've ever been to.

But that's not all! As I was rambling on here, the main course actually had arrived only very shortly after the sushi, and so I started on that as well.

Vegetable Tempura: There are again many ways to serve this dish, and to meet my approval there must be two important components: The tempura sauce must be served extremely hot, and the tempura batter can't be too thick on the vegetables. The whole point of this dish (in my opinion) is to serve excellent cooked vegetables with a light batter that performs the duty of conveying the tempura sauce, such that the resulting flavors are a mixture where the primary taste and texture is that of the vegetable, with a light crunchy texture from the batter and the sauce's flavor overlaid upon the whole thing. The common mistakes of lukewarm sauce or thick batter can easily turn this dish into a good or mediocre one. If the sauce isn't hot enough, the dried batter on the vegetable, which usually retains heat very poorly even though the vegetable will be quite hot, when soaked in the sauce, becomes a lukewarm wet batter which contrasts with the warm interior. If there's too much batter, it can be hard to taste the real center of the dish, the vegetable, and all you get is tempura sauce flavored batter. I have now been horribly sidetracked. The vegetable tempura was excellent: the sauce was hot enough that steam rose off the surface. The batter was perfect, completely covering the vegetables, but so thin that the color of the vegetables shone through. I had zucchini, eggplant, onion, green bean, carrot, green pepper, mushroom and sweet potato. A few of these deserve special mention: I don't normally like the eggplant, green pepper or sweet potato (or for the latter, not as much as L does, so she tends to claim it). With that in mind, they were excellent: I normally do not like cooked green pepper as it will go mushy, even though the taste is still good. In this case it was cooked perfectly, the outside having a slight crunchy texture without causing it to go mushy. The mushy texture is also why I tend to dislike eggplant, but in this case it was pretty good. The only odd thing was that I couldn't taste much eggplant, I'm not sure if it has a strong flavor or not as I don't tend to eat it, but it came across as mostly a solid base for the sauce flavor.

Pickled cucumbers: a small side dish that comes with the combination, I loved the japanese style pickled cucumbers as they are sweet but not overly so, and a great spiced taste.

Beef Teriyaki: There are two levels of beef teriyaki on this planet. There is the good, solid beef teriyaki that has a solid texture and conveys the sauce well. Then there is the tender, perfectly cooked excellence that I usually think of as a different dish entirely. I find it is usually pretty easy to figure out which kind I'm getting: if I order beef teriyaki and the server asks how I'd like it cooked, it will be the second kind. That is exactly the kind I ordered and got at Zono tonight (cooked medium-rare), and it was excellent, tender and juicy in its own right, and served with plenty of teriyaki sauce which complemented the beef's flavor, rather than taking it over.

The salad, rice, and egg roll: I actually remembered to ask for no dressing on the salad, as the usual one I don't really like. It was a good salad, fresh lettuce (though mostly iceberg) and a scattering of cabbage and carrots. The rice was great, though I ended up being too full to finish it, I like having it with the teriyaki as it tastes great with the teriyaki sauce. The egg roll was a tiny little thing served as decoration perhaps, but still crunchy and tasty.

Dessert: a generous slice of orange. Excellent, fresh and so juicy I had to eat it with a napkin at the ready so as to not endanger others nearby. A great finish to the meal.

On the whole it was an excellent meal, and I would (and do) recommend Zono Sushi to anyone in the area. I've eaten there many times and it's always a great experience. I feel like I should mention the prices here - it came to roughly 40$ (before tip) for the two of us, and my meal was a slightly larger portion of that.