Umi Sake House

Neighborhood: Belltown
Address: 2230 1st Ave Seattle (map)
Phone: 206-374-8717
Web: www.umisakehouse.com
Parking: Street

Overall Rating: 8.6 / 10pts

ATMOSPHERE:
Located on the 1st Avenue of Belltown district, this fairly new sushi place is decorated nice and has a stylish interior. Atmosphere wise, it's a good place to take your date. This place has an excellent happy hour (even on weekends), so it gets quite packed during those hours. I like the bathroom doors since it doesn't even look like a door, and reminds me of a ninja house.

SUSHI:
They have excellent daily menu where they offer the freshest fish that is not on the regular menu. One time when I went, they had kinmedai and warasa, which were flown directly from Japan. They were excellent along with aji, which was also on the daily menu. You can order sushi individually as opposed to in pairs, but be wanred that they are a bit pricey ($4 to $6 for one piece). These specially flown fish tastes excellent, however, they need to invest more money on the sushi chef (and possibly a rice cooker). The rice is a bit too moist and packed a little too tight. As I watched the sushi chef, who didn't look Japanese or any other Asian ethnicity, I got the impression that they weren't that into sushi. But at the same time, most of the customers didn't seem to care much for the sushi. I will have to add that they have an excellent happy hour sushi set. For $5, you can get tuna, salmon, yellowtail and albacore nigiri. I haven't seen any better deal than that.

OTHER DISHES:
Everything here is decent, but they are just overpriced. On the menu, they sound fancy and when they come out on the table, they look fancy. Their happy hour deal is excellent and has decent selections including tempura. The scallop dish was excellent, but agedashi tofu didn't have as much dashi flavor as I would have liked. But they have excellent selection of sake menu. Maybe that's what they are focused on more than sushi since the restaurant name is Umi Sake House, insead of sushi house. The only problem with their wide selections is that most of the sake needs to purchased by a bottle, so unless you are there with groups of friends that enjoy sake, you are stuck with about a dozen selection (which is still not bad). One time I tried their red rice sake, which had a tint of red (that looked like rosa wine), and tasted a bit like red wine.

SERVICE:
The wait staffs seemed to be more knowledgeable about the sake selection than the sushi selection, but compared to most American owned sushi restaurants, I have to give the staff credit for knowing more than not knowing. Overall, the service is good. Your water is filled all the time. Since there are usually only one or two bar tenders, your drink order can take a bit of time.

Musashi's

Neighborhood: Wallingford
Address: 1400 N 45th St Seattle (map)
Phone: 206-633-0212
Web: N/A
Parking: Street

Overall Rating: 7.8 / 10pts

ATMOSPHERE:
A lot of my American friends have told me that Musashi on 45th St in Wallingford is one of the best sushi places in Seattle. I've been wanting to check it out, but there is always lines of people wanting in front, even on a weeknight. Compared to other small Wallingford sushi joint like, Kozue, Musashi is much smaller and feels more crammed. It is definitely not a place to sit around and enjoy the dining experience.

SUSHI:
Be warned. The sushi here is huge. It is almost twice as big as the normal sushi anywhere else (with the exception of Sam's Sushi in Ballard). I can normally eat 8 to 10 pieces of sushi, but here 4 sushi filled me up. Both the fish and rice are big. The fish itself is decent tasting, but I have to dock off points for their humongous sushi. Sushi is meant to be eaten in one mouthful, so it defeats the purpose when I have to take a bite, and put down the half eaten sushi. To compensate for this, rice is packed way too tightly. However, the good thing is that for their huge size sushi, the price is very reasonable, so if you are a student on budget, I guess it's worth the wait and taking multiple bites. Also, since this is a small neighborhood joint, their sushi selection is just basic.

OTHER DISHES:
They have some non-sushi stuff, including the bento box which has the basic stuff like Japanese teriyaki. Like their sushi, the portion is big and it's cheap. Nothing stands out as being bad or delicious. If you can eat a lot and are on budget, you'll enjoy the bento box.

SERVICE:
Since there are only a few tables in the restaurant, the service is usually fairly fast, unless the kitchen is busy with take out orders (which seems to happen quite frequently). As I said earlier, there's always a wait. On a cold rainy weeknight, you may only have to wait 5 minutes, but most likely you'll have to wait. Make sure to bring cash with you since that's all they accept here.

Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill

Neighborhood: Ballard
Address: 5506 22nd Ave NW Seattle (map)
Phone: 206-783-2262
Web: N/A
Parking: Street

Overall Rating: 7.9 / 10pts

ATMOSPHERE:
Located next to the movie theater in Ballard, the inside of Sam's Sushi Bar & Grill feels more like a Chinese or Thai restaurant than Japanese restaurant. For the most part, this place is fairly quiet and even on weekends, it's not hard to get a table.

SUSHI:
The sushi was priced a little higher than I had expected for a place in Ballard, but when I was served, I could see why. The fish was quite large though not as obscenely huge like at Musashi's in Wallingford. My two pieces of uni could've been made into four pieces at other places. The fish tasted fresh and excellent, but I have to be picky and say that the sushi was not made well. The rice tasted a little different than the normal sushi rice, and it was also packed too tight. When you take a bite of sushi made by a real trained sushi chef, the rice should easily fall apart in your mouth. It's a shame because when I first took a bite of their sushi, I tasted the fresh fish, and a second later, everything felt awkward. I did enjoy that they knew what was fresh and in season. Their recommended fish (at this time it was kampachi and uni) were definitely worth the Belltown-ish price.

OTHER DISHES:
For non sushi eaters, or for those only want to take try a couple of sushi, they have excellent bento box choices where you get to try variety of traditional Japanese food. Everything tastes good, but something about it tastes a little different from the ones you would get in Japan. I did however love the fact that they served Orion beer from Okinawa, which is hard to find here in Seattle.

SERVICE:
Sushi comes out fast at this place, and so does everything else. The reason could be that this place is usually only half full, but for that reason, the service is pretty good.