kata robata

kata robata
3600 kirby dr #h @ richmond

first walking in, you'll notice that not too much has changed inside except the wall color and some art work. the green tea stained walls are now a warm brown hue, but hue, the former restaurant, is now a goner. that upscale, vietnamese restaurant that opened last year almost to the exact day has been put to bed and the azuma group have decided to focus on what they seem to do much better: sushi.

so interestingly enough, there is no robatayaki (japanese style charcoal grill) in sight. i was told they are planning to build a grill outside which seems even stranger. i'm sure i'll return and actually try the robata - i dig any foods usually served on a stick - but tonight was for omakase. i was here to find out how sushi chef hori-san (from kubo's) was settling in behind his new sushi bar. i definitely recommend sitting front stage when you go. hori-san is a real pleasure to chat with and totally understood all my photo taking even showing me his own photos on his i-phone from catalan a couple weeks ago.

it's been awhile since i've actually felt the need to blog about a meal as soon as i got home. tonight i felt it. i don't think i've ever been excited about japanese cuisine in houston, but now i am. this is what omakase (chef's choice literally translated "it's up to you") looked like tonight.

lobster ceviche. lobster tail, avocado, spinach, green leaf, tomatoes, and red onions in a soy sauce, sesame oil, mirin, & yuzu vinaigrette: a tad overdressed, but the dressing was tasty and brought out the sweetness of the lobster tail.


japanese red snapper (madai) sashimi w/asian truffle oil sauce. the sauce of white truffle oil, yuzu and soy was absolutely delightful and the yamamomo ("mountain peach") was a wonderfully sweet and luscious palate cleanser to save for the end. (available on regular menu)


uni & king crab spoons. the sweet uni and the dashi-heavy and tangy sunomono sauce had a wonderful smokiness to it. black caviar added a bit of salt and texture. (available on regular menu)


"kakuni" pork belly. pork belly braised in sweet soy sauce over butter sauteed spinach with micro greens. i can't explain how delicious this was. the pork belly was tender and unctuous but the buttery spinach sent each bite over the top with the added depth the butter imparted. chinese hot mustard garnished the plate and helped balance the fat. (available on regular menu) don't we have a pork belly throwdown coming soon?? this would rival the best of them.


foie gras with daikon. foie was a tad overcooked but still very enjoyable. the sauce was smokey from dashi, slightly sweet from mirin, and had a nice depth imparted by fish stock made from hamachi fish bones. very good dish, but totally outshined by the foie dish to follow. (available on regular menu)


shima aji (japanese striped bass), o toro (tuna belly), copper river salmon sashimi (from left to right). both the toro and salmon melted in my mouth from the high fat content. all of the fish was very fresh. the copper river salmon seemed smoother and more mild than regular salmon. this was served with hon wasabi.


hon wasabi on sharkskin grater. stolen from behind the sushi bar for the photo, this is what fresh wasabi (japanese horseradish) looks like. it's grated to order and is milder than the powdered, bright green stuff that we're used to that is cut with mustard to make it cheaper and more potent. the crisp, radish-like texture is enjoyable. once you taste this stuff, you might not ever accept the cheap, powdered stuff again.


foie gras and scallop sushi. served on a nugget of white rice, this was such a winning combination of creamy, buttery foie and a completely different kind of creamy, buttery scallop. topped with a bit of nabeyaki (sweet eel sauce), this dish was truly amazing and easily the highlight of the meal.


soy marinated tuna. we were instructed not to use soy sauce with this course. the tuna was already salted from the marinade. the fish was firm almost a bit rubbery, but not in an unpleasant way. it was very interesting to experience tuna this way.


amaebi with uni sushi. i have to admit that i'm not a big fan of amaebi (sweet shrimp). i usually order it at a sushi bar if they'll deep fry the heads and i'll try to pawn the shrimp off on a dining companion or i'll reluctantly eat it just to get rid of it. it has an unnerving creamy texture that i don't like. today i learned it can be enjoyable with uni on top. the uni tonight (on a monday btw) was so sweet and fresh. i'd eat amaebi any day if it were served like this.


copper river salmon sushi. a much deeper orange than regular salmon although it's not apparent from this photo. simply prepared with yuzu and a little sea salt. was instructed by the chef not to use any soy sauce. a great ode to the "simpler is better" school of thought.


anago and toro & takowan maki. the steamed sea eel (left) was tender and rich with nabeyaki and hon wasabi on top. hori-san said he orders the sea eel whole from japan and cuts it himself. the maki doesn't look very enticing but the buttery toro combined with the crunchy takowan (japanese radish) was a tasty combination.

after twelve courses, i cried uncle and then the desserts came out...

black sesame creme brulee. i never met a creme brulee that i didn't like and ground black sesame adds a wonderful nuttiness to it. totally yummy.


yuzu sorbet. very good too. the sorbet was smooth with a great mouth-feel and the yuzu (japanese citrus) added fantastic citrus-y and floral tones. it was refreshing and great summer dessert.


green tea tiramisu. good but not great. i wanted more floral green tea flavors from it. it was delicate and very hard to offend.

hori-san said he has more creative freedom at his new home. i'm glad i don't have to deal with kirby traffic and village parking to visit him now. also, totally excited that i have a new restaurant to add to my rotation of restaurants open on monday.

and i've been saying that the "don't eat seafood on mondays" axiom that bourdain propagated with his book kitchen confidential really doesn't apply to houston. tonight i think i proved my point.

p.s. i asked hori-san if there is any good ramen in houston and he said no.

ramen quest - strike 2

sasaki
8979 westheimer rd nr. fondren

nope, sasaki's ramen didn't cut it either. you can tell by just looking at it. yes, this is strike two on the ramen quest for me. i'm slowly going down my list of japanese owned restaurants in houston and so far i'm coming up with nothing. this is their shoyu (soy sauce) ramen. it tasted as boring as it looked. it looked healthy! the chashu pork was lean and chewy, not soft or buttery at all. at least nippon's was better than this one and had lots of tender chashu in it.

this is what santouka's shoyu ramen looks like, this is the holy grail of ramens. just look at the grease floating on the top of the broth. look at the fattiness of the chashu. santouka is actually more famous for their shio (salt) ramen but i can't even find anyone in houston that makes it. the ramen quest continues.

this is misha's chirashi lunch. the tamago pieces were huge and very good (which in jenny language means not too sweet). i forgot to ask him how his sushi was, but i didn't hear him gripe (which he is quite good at) so i guess it was decent enough for him - which translates into "very good" to the rest of us.

this was D.'s cold buckwheat noodles. they were served with a soy sauce based dipping sauce on the side with minced scallions and wasabi on the side to taste. it was refreshing but not that exciting.

i asked our server if they had softshell crawfish. she nodded so i ordered three since misha and dorothy had never tried it before. fried softshell crab came to the table instead and when i told her i asked for softshell crawfish, she said they never carry it. of course we didn't turn the crab away, but FYI, kaneyama has fried softshell crawfish sometimes.

here's a close up of our fried softshell crab. it was excellent. smaller than nippon's but tastier.

what's next on the ramen quest? i just found this photo of the ramen at kaneyama on yelp. that's not right either... a blog commenter left a tip that i should try sushi jin's. or maybe i'll give teppay a shot. but even better, i'm going back to LA next week. i shall return to the mecca of ramen for my fix. i will come back bearing better photos i promise.

teppay

teppay
6516 westheimer @ voss

(sorry we're back to the shitty quality photos. i took these last week and have quite a few more reviews to catch up on. even i am sad that i'm regressing back to the photos a la my camera phone.)

i had sushi last wednesday night at nippon, sat at the bar, asked the sushi chef what was fresh and he said "tuna." i was hoping for something a bit more adventurous and asked him if there was anything else he recommended, he described a sushi roll with tempura flakes in it. wrong answer! i'm a purist when it comes to sushi. i don't want anything deep fried or cream cheesy along my raw goods. and i just couldn't believe that this sushi chef would even eat what he just recommended to me. yearning for a better sushi bar experience with someone who also spoke japanese, i had to travel outside the loop. (i didn't have enough energy to brave the crowd and park in the village to go to kubo's.)

enter teppay, the traditional japanese/sushi joint known for always being filled with japanese businessmen. the small restaurant was packed at 9 pm on a friday night. there was a large japanese party happily drinking, eating, and making a ruckus. thankfully we got a seat at the sushi bar on the other side of the narrow space. there were lots of other couples there, both anglo and asian. i couldn't tell which of the other asian patrons were japanese. i'm pretty bad at guessing based on appearance alone. it kind of erks me when people think they can and take the liberty to involve me in trying to guess my ethnicity (i get korean all the time) and especially if they aren't asian themselves. anyway, i knew the large party was japanese b/c they were talking very loudly. i can distinguish between the asian languages by ear. it's not hard.

so we're at the sushi bar. our 18 year old, very charming sushi chef named simon took care of us. (there was also a much older sushi chef behind the bar too, definitely way past the legal drinking age.) simon tells us that the horse mackerel (aji) just came in today and was very fresh. i ask simon if horse mackerel tastes anything like spanish mackerel which i dislike. he says its much milder. simon pulled out a 6 inch silvery fish for us to inspect. "is this big enough?" after a nod from us, he started busily chopping scallions. a few minutes later, a small plate was placed in front of us. the fileted mackeral was skewered into a bow like fashion and below it on a large shiso leaf was the fresh mackeral diced into smallish sized pieces with the skin still on. the finely minced scallions and chopped shiso was mixed into this tartare. 2 thick slices of english cucumber (i don't think it was japanese b/c the skin was so smooth) and freshly grated wasabi garnished the plate.

the horse mackerel was lovely, just amazing. no soy sauce was necessary. just a tiny bit of fresh wasabi (which is SO MUCH better than the stuff made from powder) with each bite. when we finished the plate, the mackerel remains were set to the kitchen and reappeared deep fried. we picked small bits of fish off the fish bone and tail. i started nibbling at the cheeks and the young sushi chef told me he just eats the whole head. ahh, like fried amaebi heads! i get it. eating a fried mackerel head was definitely a bit more dangerous than smaller shrimp heads, but my friend and i got it down. delicious!

next we each ordered a spicy chopped scallop and spicy hamachi handrolls. first of all, the nori sheets were freshly roasted and still crisp. what a difference it made! the scallop handroll was creamy, the fresh scallops were sweet. the scallop bits looked more like teeny-tiny bay scallops than chopped up scallops. the spicy hamachi containing finely minced scallions was okay. i was glad that there was no mayo in it. the quality of the hamachi was decent, not great.

then our chirashi arrived. i like to think of chirashi as the poor man's omakase (this one was $23). it's at the chef's discretion what goes into the chirashi, albeit most of the ingredients usually stay the same. today we got a piece of sake, hamachi, maguro, ebi, suzuki, hirame, unagi, tako, shiro maguro (albacore), saba, tamago, and tobiko. the tamago was just made and still warm. the egg omelet wasn't overly sweet and this was the first time in years i could remember actually finishing a whole piece. yamagobo and sweet marinated shiitakes also came in the cute chirashi box. i appreciated that they skipped the fake crab, but the quality of most of the fish left something to be desired. a few pieces were stringy and probably shouldn't have been served. we ended the meal with another two orders of sake nigiri.

will i come back? most definitely just to hang out with simon and see what other delicacies are behind the bar on a non-weekend night. chef recommendations seem to be the way to go here. i also spied 2 ramens on the menu which i will have to come back for continuing my ramen quest.

my sushi restaurant of choice is still sage 400. the quality of their seafood can't be beat and i love some of the modern japanese fusion items on the menu. but i'll save that for a whole other blog posting.

ramen quest - strike 1

nippon
4464 montrose nr. richmond

see original ramen quest post

i set myself up for disappointment. i should have known that i couldn't have expected a great ramen to come out of a sushi restaurant. it takes HOURS of simmering pork bones to make a proper ramen soup base. and just like i can't expect an exceptional bowl of pho at mai's, the same rules should apply for a sushi restaurant.

ramen is listed simply as "japanese ramen" on their menu. when ordered, our server asked me if i wanted miso, soy sauce, or tonkatsu. i chose the soy sauce (shoyu) version that i enjoyed so much at santouka.

when the bowl arrived at the table, i was pleasantly surprised. the broth did look a little milky like santouka's version and i saw tiny, tiny dots of grease swimming on top. this made me hopeful. my first bite was overwhelmed by the flavor of bamboo shoots. so i took them out and mixed it all up a bit. i found half a boiled egg in there and lots of chashu pork. the pork looked soft and fatty. there was also plenty of nori, green onions, and bean sprouts on top. mixing didn't help much. there just wasn't enough flavor and complexity in the broth. the noodles weren't toothy enough. the only redeeming item in my bowl was the chashu. it was tender and buttery and there was plenty of it. at santouka, i only had a small slice of chashu but i ordered the small bowl there.

michael, who read my ramen quest posting and called me b/c he wanted to come, ordered the nabeyaki udon. the broth was light with a slight smoky flavor and the noodles were gummy as expected. it came with a tempura shrimp floating on top of the bowl. i forgot to tell them to bring it on the side. we started out with a wonderful soft shell crab appetizer w/ ponzu dipping sauce. the crab was huge and so a few bites were a bit roe-y. is that a word?

ramen quest

when i was in L.A. over memorial weekend, i drove a total of 3 hours to/from santa monica for ramen -- REAL ramen, not the shit that's 10 for a $1 at fiesta. the destination was santouka in the mitsuwa market, a japanese grocery store and food court. was the trip worth it? UH HUH. i'm still finding myself daydreaming about these bowls of heaven. the photo on the left is the visual menu at santouka. it's basically just a window full of fake really shiny bowls of food. (click on the photo to enlarge it.)

i couldn't decide between the shoyu (soy sauce) and shiyo (salt) ramens so i got small orders of both. the shoyu ramen (left photo) was smokier, but it was a tad greasy. the shio ramen broth (right photo) was more delicate and flavorful. the noodles were terrific and firm. the pork chashu was velvety, melt in your mouth. it's hard to say which one i liked better. they were different and both equally sensational.


my question is: does ramen even half as good exist in houston?

i have 2 leads. the first is yorimichi japanese kitchen next door to daido japanese grocery on westheimer & wilcrest. today i found out on this blog that nippon serves ramen too, although i'm a little concerned because the blogger mentioned bean sprouts in theirs. nippon is a short drive away. i may try to make it there for lunch.

you know what my life is missing? a japanese friend. there is so much to explore in the world of japanese cuisine and i really need someone to lead the way. please spread the word that i'm recruiting. i'm totally serious.

and i think it's time to watch tampopo again.

update: see ramen quest strike 1

shabu shabby

shabu house
9889 bellaire blvd #31
dun huang shopping center

i went to shabu house friday night with 3 friends. it's a small restaurant that has a giant horseshoe shaped bar custom made to hold an individual hot pot and burner for each seat. the bar was full when we arrived and we were sat in one of the few tables in the restaurant. the tables seemed have been put there as an afterthought to the original design of the restaurant. the restaurant was packed at 8:30.

i was looking forward to my first shabu shabu experience. shabu shabu or japanese hot pot literally means "swish, swish" in japanese which refers to the swishing sound chopsticks make when dipping and moving raw items around in hot broth . first of all, i was disappointed to find that the restaurant is run by chinese people, but i should have known. somehow i was expecting an authentic japanese experience.

here, everyone gets their own individual hot pot and burner. everyone is required to order 1 shabu setup (no splitting). the choices were beef, more beef, seafood, beef & seafood (double food), veggie, and veggie deluxe. the cost was $11.99 to $18.99 per plate/person although veggie might be a little cheaper. the beef looked like thinly sliced ribeye, a heavily marbled meat. each person also got a plate of assorted veggies, bean thread noodles, and other goodies such as fish balls, rice cake, tofu, taro root, and bean curd skin, as well as 2 dipping sauces which were quite good: sesame & soy sauce/ponzu.

i decided i won't be back based on the following reasons:

1. i prefer family style hot pot. the communal effort is fun.
2. you are required to order too much food. i couldn't finish half my plate of beef.
3. the broth is almost tasteless when it comes to the table.
4. the seafood was almost all frozen. i didn't need to know with certainty that the seafood i was about to eat wasn't fresh.
5. there is a lack of meat variety. a pork, chicken, and lamb option would be nice.
6. value. the hot pots at tan tan are $22.95 - 25.95 and feed 3 to 4 easily.

i think i'm on a bit of a hot pot tangent right now. i look forward to trying sinh sinh's version soon. i also know that lucky pot, sichuan cuisine, and fu fu cafe serve it as well.

soma

4820 washington ave #A @ shepherd

did anyone read this article in the chronicle today about robert gadsby, formerly of noe? he is at soma now, the new franco-japanese place that opened on shepherd/washington by the azuma folks:

i've been to soma twice now since it's soft opening several weeks ago. i had higher expectations since it is owned by azuma and i want to see this place succeed b/c of the location. personally, i think there is much better sushi in houston than azuma, but the location is within a 5-10 min drive of my house and i'm excited to see washington ave. become the new, hip part of houston with all the recent openings of restaurants, bars, & clubs.

back to soma, my first visit was on the 4th day they were open. the sushi was mediocre, although the fresh salmon was wonderful. i don't normally order rolls but the soma roll was listed on their sushi menu as having cilantro and onion in it, so i couldn't pass it up. it came to the table with tempura crunch all over it and there was no onion or cilantro flavors to be found.

disappointing.... on my second visit, a week and a half later, again, the sushi was mediocre. they did have a live scallop special where they served it 2 ways and it was excellent. but both times, the quality of the sushi was worse than azuma (and i've frequented both locations). it seems to me that they have a different seafood purveyor for this establishment?

the non-sushi menu is all gadsby's doing. i have to say that is was very strange seeing a kitchen full of non-asians back there (is that un-PC of me to say that?). the menu is creative. think truffle oil, quail eggs, fois gras. my first night, i ordered a hot plate with ny strip loin and potatoes. the steak (about 4 oz.) was chewy, although cooked a perfect medium-rare. the potatoes were similar to an au gratin, but less saucy with a nice buttery finish. it was apparent to me that this dish could have been heavenly, if not for the low-quality of the meat. i think this small dish was $18. i would have gladly paid $25 for it with a better piece of beef.

on my second visit, the non-sushi menu had changed, although it was still printed on normal white copier paper stapled together with the word "DRAFT" stamped on it. there was a fois gras terrine with raw tuna on there that i could not pass up. it sounded interesting, scary even. it was served just like a slice of a terrine. there was a large hunk of tuna in the middle and fois gras wrapped around it. it was served with a mango relish. no regrets, it was very interesting, much better than i could have ever imagined, but a novelty. fois gras is much better in more classic preparations.

soma is already reeling in big crowds. expect a wait. expect a large bar crowd. expect loud techno music. give it a try, but stick to the non-sushi menu. they still have a lot of kinks to work out and the chronicle article says that gadsby will work on the sushi menu when he is done with the main menu. but really, he just needs to find a new fishmonger,some sushi chefs with better knife skills, and probably just add a few more rolls for the not-so-serious-sushi-eater types.