It's 3 meals in one! With a few days between as break, we adventure across a Yamayuki trail of sorts and there is a spectrum of style in both rice and tuna noting that the latter is supplied by the same guy to all 3 restaurants. I will avoid an essay on each and every item, but some are of note. I think having a good time is almost as important as the food with sushi omakase since you'll remember it, and while the diners may change, the chef plays an important part.
We begin with the light – lunch at Sushi Saito Azabudai. Bookings go in a few hours when they open. About 2 weeks out seems to have some. Guests were a mixture of Japanese and foreign. Staff and chef greeted everyone warmly and got to work. 2 chefs to 10 diners. You can definitely feel them hustle but the fabled Saito style of pressing the sushi so lightly it settles when they place it down occurs.
We got 12 pieces over about 45 minutes – hirame, sawada, kohada, maguro, chuutoro, ootoro, squid, kurumaebi, sayori, uni, anago and kanpyo. The opening is nice and the natural standouts are the kohada and tuna. Clean and an absence of flaws, well rounded zuke maguro, perfect chuutoro, luscious ootoro. The squid reveals the flavours of the rice including how it's cooked (perfectly) and seasoned (mostly komezu, a bit of akazu?, and noticeable salt), and over the course of the meal, temperature is maintained by only taking it out as required. Kurumaebi and big and meaty. The anago is mid and has too much moisture with the sauce a bit thin. Kanpyomaki is obviously to be filling. Afterwards, further pieces were offered and the egg dish was a very good egg pudding in dark sugar sauce. This is probably as good as supermarket sushi gets anywhere and is one of the accessible means of having sushi with the Saito name. Subsequent bookings were also offered. Nice and a good benchmark, but just a tad sterile.
Next up is the second counter at Ryujiro. I admittedly booked this because it has a dragon in the name. Another easy booking though omakase tends to lag out when they open each month. This is a small 5 seat room off to the side. There's two of us, a Japanese diner and a Canadian duo, though we're all asian. The sitting does start off quietly with little conversation but the chef and other diners really open up later. We can overhear how lively the main counter is and Nakamura-san pays us a few visits over the night. Opening is a piece of chuutoro, bam, flavour. The style is medium, again clean flavour but deeper than the Saito. Next, a series of dishes follow including daikon and miso, fugu with shirako, tororo and spicy oroshi, chawanmushi, sea cucumber (first time, interesting cucumber like feel), fried scallop (simple, perfect), ankimo and grilled tachiuo. The fugu was naturally a good conversation starter with all of us wondering whether we'd live to tell the tale.
The rice here was served fairly warm. Subsequent sushi consisted of cuttlefish (again, great introduction to the rice), zuke'd sawada, botan ebi (luscious), zuke'd maguro, chuutoro round 2 cut differently, ootoro, kohada, uni, anago (as a delicious roll) and egg served steaming fresh. The number of plated dishes kinda did steal the show a little but otherwise a very enjoyable night as all the diners got along. The chef and Nakamura-san appeared outside after the meal to send us off.
Finally, Sato's counter at Hakkoku. This is my second visit here. Sato's counter is more difficult than the others to book in advance, but you can message him. Cancellations also regularly occur here and there on omakase for bookings up to a week out. Last visit, it was a 4 foreigner 2 Japanese, but this time I'm the only foreigner. Sato-san's English is good and he makes conversation to everyone and was quite personable. As with last time, there is a bit of a vibe spectrum that seemed to be predicted. To the right of the counter the most engaged, while left of me was the couple that spent more time amongst themselves. An English menu was printed for me. 25 pieces is a bit of a marathon but it all kinda works without palate fatigue and the strangely interspersed vegetable dishes to enjoy at your pleasure add fibre or something (vegetables and miso whip, roasted carrot and turnip with salt, and sliced capsicum). This is the richer, darker style of tuna and vinegar in comparison to the others, with modernisation such as toppings on some pieces. He uses way more akazu and the tuna matches this.
Opening sushi is a tossaki roll – boom, crisp and almost smoky nori, expressive vinegared rice and rich tuna, then there is hirame (kinda cold, floppy, a tad chewy), kasugodai, octopus (with umeboshi), amaebi, akagai, buri (with sweet pickled onion), aji (with ginger), ankimo, shirako (grilled a tad, served hot), sawara (lightly aburi), fugu (kombujime, nice umami), cuttlefish (a little citrus juice), chuutoro, ootoro, maguro zuke (the tuna is noticeably deeper in flavour and you can taste the iron in the maguro), kohada, kurumaebi (nicely cooked and nutty), sayori (with chives), kinmedai (a favourite), clam (with sweet eel sauce), uni, anago (perfect) and the egg was done as a creme brulee style.
The rice was generally cooler except for the tuna pieces and some neta were noticeably cool. Flavour-wise, this is my preferred style of sushi with big bold flavours. With some refinement, I could see Sato joining the big leagues in the future. I would like to try the main counter at Ryujiro to compare, and I've seen it occasionally appear on omakase.
by dentetsuryu
Dining and Cooking