52. Kotobuki
On Sunday I finally tried Kotobuki, a teeny tiny sushi restaurant in the Palisades. Now I say finally for the following two reasons: 1) I live in the same ‘hood and 2) I love sushi with the fire of a thousand suns. I used to drive by Kotobuki (and it’s much more grown up sister restaurant, Makoto) on a fairly regular basis and say to myself “there’s that good sushi restaurant, I should stop there, I’m in the wrong lane, oops there it goes…” And so I’ve never stopped—until now!
I went with my best buddy Julie’s parents, who, like Julie, have become followers of my blog/quest for eating. However, Julie has yet to come out to one of my restaurants with me, so I now like her parents a little bit more than her. Also, her dad likes to bring up how awesome our 7th grade softball team was. And anyone who likes to talk about my glory days is okay in my book. A distant second reason that they were great dining partners was that they are well researched in the ways of Washingtonian and serious with their ordering. We started with the shrimp shumai and monkfish liver (two of the three specials)—both were pretty awesome. The shumai was sweet and the monkfish liver was unlike any fish part I had ever had before. It really could have passed for foie gras, but was served with cucumber slices in a soy broth—delicious and very different from the standard French liver presentations I’m used to. Then we went with the spicy scallop roll and two nigiris—white tuna and yellow tail. The fish was so fresh that it almost literally melted in your mouth. It would have seemed like a crime to order any of the cream cheese-laden rolls on the menu with fish this good. Then we had one of the kamameshis that we read about in the magazine—little pots of steamed rice with chicken (or eel) and vegetables that were served with little side dishes of seaweed, mushrooms and sashimi. I’m still not sure if we were supposed to combine all the things is some magic way but I ate them separately and thought it was good, if not all that exciting compared to the sushi. We finished off with a huge rainbow roll that was so red with caviar it should have been called the ‘on fire roll’, and the oshizushi, a very large nigiri-type preparation of mackerel. To be honest, it was not as bad as I thought it would be, but mackerel is a pretty fishy and oily bastard and eating it raw is a little more adventure than I could handle. But I give them some serious kudos for serving me raw mackerel and leaving me thinking it wasn’t all that bad.
Kotobuki is definitely an unassuming place—once inside the door you walk through a curtain that you usually see blocking the kitchen off from the rest of the restaurant and up a flight of stairs before you’re in the dining room of maybe 8 tables and a small bar. They seemed to be doing a big carry out business and after eating there I can see why. I’m going to do a much better job of actually stopping when I drive by it from now on. Maybe not for the mackerel though.
