Zushiya

I recenly spent an evening with friends at Zushiya a sushi restaurant in Maple Grove. This sushi restaurant is attached to the Sawatdee Thai restaurant, in the fake Main Street area of Maple Grove.

The rolls were ok. None that I tasted were a symphony in the mouth but they were much better than you get at the grocery store. The Miso was good and very welcome, given how cold the night air was. I had a spider roll since people have been telling me how great they are. I liked it ok, but I wasn't converted. I especially thought that the size of the end pieces, with the soft-shell crab claws awkwardly sticking out, was especially difficult to eat.

One item really stood out to me. I ordered the bin toro nigiri for dessert. It didn't come and I reminded our waitress about it. She came back a few minutes later with the bin toro. It was sashimi instead of nigiri -- but I wasn't worried about that. It was artfully prepared in the shape of a flower and it was truly amazing. The flavor was perfect, it was all the melt in your mouth buttery goodness that you expect from white toro. I should have just ordered the miso and some bin toro and called it a night. I actually wanted toro, but it wasn't available -- no matter the white toro was great.

I think our server had too many patrons to serve at the same time, like maybe someone had called in sick. This resulted in longer than expected delays and some instances of forgetting. She also didn't know the menu very well and couldn't answer questions about the offerings.

When the bill came it was exactly $100.00 for our food. The strange thing is that the tax brought the total to 106.51. That seemed strange, is there a special tax in Maple Grove that makes the rate 6.51%? More likely it's a software error.

Scott McGerik has already been there, as you might imagine, and written about his experience.