The Way of the Sushi Chef Is Found In...

Every few months a friend will mention a new sushi place. What follows is generally the proclamation that X is the best ever to grace our native caliche and that the fish there is just as good as anything you can get in LA, NY, San Francisco, fill in the blank.

Which is, of course, all bullshit.

Sushi is, at base, extremely simple food. Fish and rice. The better those two ingredients are, the better the meal. And fish of better quality is available other places that are closer to the ocean, places that have things like wholesale fish markets. Superlative, blow your mind nigiri requires classically trained chefs steeped in hundreds of years of tradition. Those folks ain't moving to Tucson for a twelve dollar an hour job.

That said, Tucson certainly has its share of perfectly adequate sushi restaurants where the chefs care about what they're doing and try to make your experience as pleasurable as possible. And that's what it really is about.

When the fish is the same in this joint or that one, there's little about the menu itself that divides one place from another. That's especially true for those like myself who veer more closely to the nigiri/sashimi edge of the sushi spectrum. Seriously, if you're not a nineteen year old sorority girl, why are you having a caterpillar roll? Why? Because you don't like the taste of fish. The same way you drink wine coolers because you still want to get drunk without that nasty alcohol taste.

But I digress.

Here's what I'm looking for in a satisfactory sushi restaurant:

1. It must be clean.
2. Seriously, it has to be clean.
3. I don't want the spicy yellowtail on my roll to be scooped out of a plastic bin.
4. I also want it to still be recognizable to the naked eye as fish.
5. The rice must be prepared correctly. It should be sushi rice, should taste faintly of vinegar and not be over cooked.
6. See number 5.
7. Consistency.
8. Service that will get the hell out of my way and let me enjoy my lunch.

Sachiko, the name means, loosely, "Happiness," delivers all this. It is, to coin Hemingway, a clean, well-lighted place. The service is attentive, but not intrusive. The fish is reasonably fresh and consistently dressed.

It is a place of comfortable routine and cared for food. My wife and I live nearby and we frequent it with our children. My wife enjoys the noodle dishes. I enjoy my sashimi. My children enjoy the chopsticks and staring at the things I eat.

In the Hagekure, one of the very first phrases states that "[t]he Way of the Samurai is found in death." That's not pointless bravado. That's the acceptance of a core Zen principle as a way of life, that the way you do something is more important than the end result. That even if the desired result is not possible, that one will still live consciously. To the best of one's ability.

Sachiko Sushi will never be the best sushi restaurant on earth. It does not have the personnel or raw material available to equal the best that New York or Los Angeles has to offer. It doesn't need to.

It has a small core of family willing to work hard, to grasp the best things available to them, and to give you, and me, the best they can. Without let up. Day after day. That is a thing to be admired. And Sachiko Sushi is a restaurant to be frequented.

Seoul Kitchen

I've been a big fan of Korean food for a long time.

In college, my longest-standing roommate was half Korean. His mother took care of us. And by took care of us, I mean, she tried, in a very loving way to jam herself into every aspect of our lives, from our romantic interests to our daily intake of pickled cabbage. She was gentle about it. For instance, if she thought our vegetable intake was lacking, she'd get a faraway stare and say something like, "People should eat more salad." People meaning us.

It was certainly meant well and we took it as such. Most of her advice, suggested clothing purchases, etc., we simply blithely ignored. Probably to our detriment. But the one thing I didn't ever ignore and in fact welcomed, were the monthly deliveries of kimchi. By kimchi I mean pickled cabbage with chili. I could have eaten a gallon of the stuff. Probably still could, with tears running down my face.

So happy indeed was I when Seoul Kitchen opened near our home. It's your typical strip mall joint, not very large, sort of hard to find if you don't know it's there. The food is sensational and direct. As, in my opinion, it should be. This is straight up Korean soul-food (seoul food?). That means meat. That means rice. That means two or three simple flavors, strong and without embellishment.

That certainly doesn't mean you can't embellish. Every meal comes with an assortment of kimchi. From the aforementioned cabbage to daikon, to a small dish of bean sprouts. You're free to add what you like. Plates are generally large enough to share. You certainly won't go away hungry.

You may, however, have periods of hunger. The general problem with most family run restaurants is that, at the start of the business, they have no, and I mean no, experience running a restaurant. What does that mean for you dear diner? It means your meals are cooked one at a time. In the order they get to the kitchen. So your food arrives in the same way. It means your waitress isn't really a waitress. She's more of an expediter.

Seoul Kitchen suffers when there are more than two or three diners in the place. Which there usually are. Because the food is really just that good. So good, that I'd like to overlook the service completely. But they've been there for a while now and they should have worked some of this out for themselves.

The bottom line? By all means visit the Seoul Kitchen. On a weekday. At about three o'colck.