Sushi!

Last night, neither my wife nor I felt like cooking. We had to make a trip to Fair Lakes so we were trying to think of restaurants in that area. All of the standards - Don Pablo’s, Olive Garden, Red Rooster — nothing sounded good. Then it dawned on me. A new Japanese restaurant called “Ariake” was opened, literally, right next door to us.

We were really feeling for the owners when it first started, because no one ever ate there. We always meant to try it out but never worked ourselves up to it. Over time, however, more and more people have been eating there. I think its mention in the Post garnered plenty of visitors lately.

So, back to last night. We decided to walk over and check it out. The building used to be a McDonald’s, but it was abandoned for a while. The new owners have done it up pretty good. There’s a small, rocky waterfall next to a patio with shaded tables, where we decided to eat. We didn’t get to see the inside that well, but at a glance it looked pretty nice.

I came into the experience thinking Julie was a sushi veteran. I vaguely remembered her telling me that she had had sushi and loved it. While I wouldn’t be ordering a whole plate of sushi, I figured I’d at least try some. I figured that if I were to die a slow death tomorrow and had not had sushi, I would probably be thinking to myself, “man! I wish I had tried the sushi!” So, while I normally don’t eat fish, I ordered a Bento meal that had salmon, pickled kelp, California rolls, pickled ginger root, potato dumplings, beef rolls, and tempura fried shrimp and veggies. Luckily for me, the large slab of salmon was cooked and marinated in teriyaki sauce. The beef rolls were really cool - thin slices of beef wrapped around mushrooms and asparagus. The tempura shrimp was the best shrimp I’ve ever had. Not that I’ve tried alot of shrimp, but if I’m going to have it again, it’ll be at Ariake. Along with all of the great meats and veggies were a house soy sauce and a ginger sauce. One of the things that I found myself loving was the pickled ginger. I like ginger, but I didn’t know until then that I liked it so much as to eat it raw! The only drawback for me was that I’m a complete n00b with chopsticks. My hand was aching by the end of the meal. Along with our meals, we also got some Miso soup and salad. Also very tasty.

Julie’s meal was a different story than mine. She ordered the 10-piece shushi dinner. She was served 5 pieces of tuna maki and 5 pieces of nigiri sushi with whitefish, yellow tail, red and white tuna, and octopus. I tried a couple pieces of her tuna maki, and was pleasantly surprised. It really is pretty good. However, I couldn’t get myself to eat the nigiri sushi, which is a mound of rice with a nice, big slab of raw fish sitting on top. Julie did well and ate most of it. But, she got full pretty quickly and couldn’t finish off the octopus That is something surprising about sushi - it’s actually rather filling. And it wasn’t like Chinese food where you’re just hungry again in 30 minutes.

I definitely recommend sushi if you can get it good. You could really tell that what they served at Ariake was really fresh. Their attention to presentation, including nice, thick, cardboard menus, well-cut entrees, and the atmosphere was also encouraging. The raw fish really looked beautiful!