Lake Perch Sashimi Anyone?

People, we’re back from a long hibernation in which we got engaged, planned a wedding, got married, decided to stay in Vermont for another year, and discovered that we love the show Weeds. Sorry we’ve been so silent on the Green Mountain Eats front, but we promise that will change. Posts once a week from now on! Well during that time we’ve eaten a LOT of food, some of it good, a lot of it mediocre, and a some right down disgusting.

One cuisine that we managed to run the gamut of mediocre, disgusting, and good, is Vermont’s sushi offering. This is particularly contrasted to the fact that on almost every corner in New York you can get decent to really good sushi, consistently. Just blocks from our old apartments we were lucky enough to have, Geido, Taro Sushi, and Yamato, all kick ass sushi joints. Even the lower end spots like Nana and Inaka House, were pretty kick crack, at least most of the time. Anyway, for now, NYC sushi is our past, and being Jews (for all you non-Jews out there, sushi is now the official food of the Jews, overtaking Chinese food, Kasha Varnishkes and Schmaltz) we had to venture out in the world of Vermont sushi.

Luckily, our first experience didn’t disgust us. We ate at Sakura in downtown Burlington. Now growing up in Burlington, David has been to Sakura a lot, as it was once the only Sushi game in town. Amazingly from 15 years ago to today every visit has been identical. Sakura has AMAZINGLY slow and uncaring service, a kinda drab and depressing ambiance, and yet it still manages to serve passable and at times pleasant sushi. Sakura maintains a standard selection of sashimi and sushi, appetizers and bento boxes. They do get a little “Vermonty” at times, the last time there, serving a “Squash Roll” with what tasted like some type of sweet mapley mayonnaisey sauce over it that, while tasting good, just wasn’t sushi. But if you stick to your tunas, your yellow tails, your salmons, maybe a tempura here and there, Sakura is fine. It also serves a quality, salty but not overwhelmingly so, miso soup. That being said, be prepared to wait for a table even though the restaurant is empty, to wait for service, even though there are five waiters working, wait for the check even though you’ve asked numerous times. It's a frustrating experience that makes you pledge that you’ll never be back there again, until the next time you walk by and say, the service HAS to have improved, right?

The next stop on our sushi quest did not turn out so palatable. In fact, it turned out to be the worst sushi we’ve ever tasted. We ordered take-out from Koto Japanese Steak House. Ok, maybe it was our fault for going to a Steak House for sushi, but they offered it and so we tried. What we got was unexpectedly horrid. We ordered an array of rolls and individual pieces- each one more disgusting than the next. The California rolls were tiny and mushy, the shrimp tempura roll, limp and greasy, the yellow tail translucent and untasting, and finally the tuna, oh the tuna. A common question amongst the odd and curious, is what it would be like to eat human flesh? Anyway, looking at the veiny, sinewy, pale pink flesh of Koto’s tuna pieces, I had the feeling that’s exactly what I was eating, some form of unknown flesh, either human, dog, cat, or rat, but certainly not tuna. In one bite, which was spit out after a couple of chews, was a combined taste of rot, cold, chew, tough, FISH, more rot, and then a bit of acid. It was inedible. Others tell us Koto is great, and in full disclosure we haven’t been back since, but after that experience can you blame us? We do have to say that the atmosphere in the restaurant looks kinda fun, Japanese steak house style cooking at your table. Sadly, we're not sure we can ever get over the repulsion of their food to give them another chance.

Finally, and thankfully so, we found a good, not amazing, but passable sushi place to quench our Semitic appetites for raw fish. Asiana House located at an old pizza parlor that used to have amazing eggplant parm sandwiches and greek salads, is a small, well-lit, well functioning restaurant. We’ve eaten there many times now, more impressed after each visit. The one drawback is that because it’s good, it’s crowded, always crowded, which impacts the service occasionally, but also makes the small restaurant morph nicely into a communal eating affair.


We’ve had a variety of the appetizers, all good: miso soups, salads, edamame, shumai, you know the standard starters. All were fresh, nicely portioned and pleasantly presented. The heart of the restaurant is their ability to get what tastes like extremely fresh fish, up to Burlington, Vermont, even in the winter, an impressive feat. Yellow tail, Salmon, Scallops, Shrimp, Tuna, Crab, Oshinko, Roe, Eel and others, along with their spicy versions, each have always been excellent. The sushi rice is nicely flavored with proper amounts of vinegar and sugar. Everything holds together, so you can eat each piece how it should be eaten, in one bite. Accompanying sauces are not overwhelming. We’ve simply never had the chewy piece, the fishy piece, the greasy piece, just a combination of solid, tasty, raw fish. Asiana House has an expansive menu, a full bar--including a variety of sakes--and a great terrace for warm weather seating (which in Vermont is for about a week or two a year).

Thank Hashem! After a little searching we found at least one place where we can get our raw fish fix.

Our Rating:

Sakura
Service: 1/2
Ambiance: *
Food : **
Price: $$

Koto
Service: **
Ambiance: ***
Food :
Price: $$

Asiana House
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Food : *** 1/2
Price: $$$

Rating Scale:
* average
** not bad
*** wicked good
**** the best

$ cheap eats
$$ moderately priced
$$$ expensive
$$$$ wicked expensive