At 9:40pm, we were seated to begin our omakase meal on a Friday evening. The small space located in East Village with wooden decor gave its authentic Japanese allure. The staff was extremely friendly and attentive—changing our tea when it got cold and attending to our needs.
Omakase begins at $70 per person with a variation of sashimi and nigri—or only nigri if that's what you prefer. We chose a starting point of $80 per person with sashimi and nigri. We began the meal with a some lightly seasoned lotus root and a platter of fresh sashimi. The fish was tender, tasty, and most importantly fresh and high quality. Shortly after the sashimi, we had fried shrimp head. Is it bad to say that it was probably the best piece we had? With a sprinkle of salt and lemon—it was salivating.
Lotus Root
Fried Shrimp Heads
We began our first nigri piece with freshly killed shrimp. Very tasty—a shrimp well done. This is where things started to get more interesting. The Chef slowly began to take his sweet time. A regular that sat next to us began intense 10 minute long conversations with the Chef. They drank a lot and talked a lot. A little too much. The Chef started getting sloppy and serving us nigri with straight-out-of-the rice-cooker hot rice. The overly warm rice did not contrast well with the cool raw fish. It was near the end of the night so he was probably losing concentration. We were starting to get a little irritated.
Shrimp
We ordered fried uni in addition to our meal. What a great idea. I still prefer uni as is....but fried is not a bad idea. It's crunchy, fried and really flavorful. We were served a few pieces that are not even worth mentioning as it was poorly prepared with overly warm rice and a lack of proper seasoning. The seared otoro was very juicy and delicious as always—but it's hard to screw up oroto as the fish itself does the job for you.
Our last piece was the hokkaido uni which was very good, except the Chef accidentally put soy sauce and apologized for it. Again his sloppiness was very irritating. The soy sauce wasn't actually that bad—it slightly toned down the creaminess and added more savoriness.
In addition to our omakase we ordered the tamago and famous quail egg with caviar. Probably two of the best pieces—which wasn't even part of the omakase. The tamago at Ushiwakamaru put an emphasis on the true egg flavor as compared to other places where there was more emphasis on the fish component. It was light, sweet and surprisingly refreshing. It almost looked like pieces of pineapple.
Fried Uni
Hokkaido Uni
Tamago
Seared Otoro
The quail egg with caviar was very delicious. The subtle creamy and melting egg mixed with the slight bitterness of the caviar added great texture to the bite. It was well balanced and flavored. We finished our meal close to midnight.
Our entire omakase comprised of the sashimi platter, fried shrimp head and seven pieces of nigri for $80 per person. In addition, we ordered the fried uni, tamago and quail egg with caviar ($9 piece). Overall we spent roughly $140 per person including tax and tip. Not terrible as most high-end omakase is around this price. However, the Chef's lack of focus and technique will not bring me back to this spot.
Qual egg with caviar