Woosabi

Before we moved I was hoping to try a restaurant called Woosabi that had been in the works for some time. Unfortunately they did not open before the move, so I didn't get the opportunity to. I think they'd blown their budget on advertising long before they could actually open to the public, because months before they were ready to open their doors there was a constant barrage of radio advertisements.

Anyhow, obviously I got the opportunity to try it out tonight or I wouldn't be mentioning it. The restaurant is situated in a strip mallesque office complex. There is no hostess station (is hosting the politically correct term? hosters?) so I felt a little awkward standing in the door way waiting to be seated. As we watched more people come in, also standing awkwardly while someone attended to them, this became an obvious layout flaw.

I really liked the tables because they were quite long, making it easy to place a lot of plates of sushi in front of you without making it awkward to eat. It does make it a little awkward for quiet folks like me to talk to people across from them without leaning in a whole lot though.

We ordered some sort of mixed combo platter, prairie fire rolls and a half order of duck risotto. The prairie fire rolls were really good, in a "beginners guide to sushi" sort of way, much like a California roll, with no real intimidation factor whatsoever. Totally encrusted in toasted sesame seeds and with some crushed red chilies, it's pretty much everything my unsophisticated sushi palate enjoys.

The platter had a selection of the different types of sushis I can't remember the names of. There were the California rolls, which are the seaweed in the center, rice on the outside type… the seaweed around the outside, rice on the inside type… and then an assortment of the seafood on top of the rice type. One is nigiri, one is futomaki and then there's the other one, but I'm not really sure which is which.

The smoked salmon was probably my favorite of the fish on top version. The squid piece neither of us wanted and just left to go to waste. I always forget how filling a platter of sushi can be, it just seems like such light fare. The duck risotto was horrible. The duck was kind of chewy and even though it was supposedly loaded with shittake mushrooms and such, it basically had no flavor whatsoever. Just this mushy and chewy mess of flavorless crap. Luckily, we got that taken off the bill.