Let's start this particular installment of the Food Snob with full disclosure, shall we? There aren't many foods in this world that the Snob likes to shove down his gullet more than sushi. Aside from pizza, tacos, cheeseburgers, French toast and pad thai, sushi is pretty much on the top of the list. So when the 2011 Cappies winners were announced, I quickly scoured the list for the top sushi joints in town. Ichiban, out at 118 Manchester St., placed second; why not start there?
From what I had heard, Ichiban is primarily known as a Japanese steakhouse. Sure, they might be able to put on a good show cracking eggs, chopping veggies, setting things on fire and squirting sake into your craw, but the Snob prefers substance over flash. Still, the people had spoken, so it was off to Ichiban.
Dining companion in tow, I grabbed a booth, scanned the menu, and was instantly struck by a unique item that seemed too good to be true. Sushi . . . pizza? Sushi pizza! What a concept! Only $10 for two of the greatest foods ever combined into one like some sort of superfood. The Snob couldn't have been happier if they had offered him a cheeseburger with French toast buns (a subject for another day, God willing). My dining companion collared the waiter, who said that the sushi pizza was an Ichiban specialty, unique to the restaurant. We ordered one as an appetizer.
The sushi pizza arrived a few minutes later, and at first all my dining companion and I could do was gape at it. It looked amazing! The crust consisted of a disc of white rice given the tempura treatment. This was topped with a layer of spicy tuna, tabiko (flying fish roe), onion and scallions. Atop that, a healthy sprinkling of tempura crunches and a beautiful criss-crossing pattern of those super-secret sushi sauces. We dug in. It was unlike anything the Snob had ever ingested. The warm, crunchy rice patty below served as a nice contrast to the tuna above in both texture and temperature. The spicy tuna appeared to be in a pate format of some sort, set off perfectly by the array of sauces. The dish received the Snob seal of approval without a doubt.
After such a unique and delicious appetizer, one might surmise that any entree would be anticlimactic. Fortunately, that was not the case. There were a plethora of tantalizing rolls to choose from; what would we order? The Out of Control roll? The Hot Babe roll? Ultimately, we went with the house specialty, the 118 Manchester Street roll, and the maki roll lunch combo special.
The roll combo ($11) consists of your choice of three six-piece rolls. We selected the spicy tuna, spicy crab and shrimp tempura rolls. The spicy tuna and spicy crab were both standard; if you enjoy sushi, you'd probably like these no-frills selections. Ichiban's shrimp tempura roll, however, was a bit different from versions of the roll that I've had. Instead of simply inserting chunks of battered shrimp into the roll, it appeared as if Ichiban's sushi artist took two whole jumbo shrimp and sectioned them off into thirds, then rolled them up. This created a very interesting presentation, as two of the rolls now featured the tempura shrimp tails sticking straight up into the air. As I mentioned before, the Snob prefers substance over flash. Never fear, it was as succulent as it looked.
The 118 Manchester Street roll ($13) entailed a similar presentation. The roll consisted of shrimp tempura, with those now-familiar tails rising up like a flagpole, spicy lobster, pepper tuna, cucumber and avocado with a mango sauce. These rolls were excellent. The tempura did not disappoint, the lobster spilled out of the roll in a delicious cornucopia of fflavor, and the sweet mango sauce was the icing on the cake, so to speak. The only complaint the Snob could render was that the myriad flavors contained in the roll made it difficult to savor each one inpidually. But, hey, to have such problems, right?
