Overall Team Fugu rating – 4.4 / 5
Sake Cafe exterior
Not too far South down New Scotland past AMC, you’ll come across the short brick structure that houses the Sake Cafe. The tasteful top-lit sign with its artistic stylization conflicts with the crooked poster in the window and neon “open” lights, making you wonder if it’s really as tasteful inside as the sign would want you to believe. It is.
Beyond the entryway lies an expanse of dark, richly finished wood against a backdrop of olive yellow walls. A full-length bar, which serves as their sushi bar stretches the length of the restaurant, topped off by two large, wall-mounted flat-screen televisions. The end effect is a very comfortable brand of class – you get to feel that you’re in a well finer-than-average restaurant without feeling obliged to dress the part.
Sake Cafe dining room
Now be forewarned – despite the namesake the Sake Cafe doesn’t actually sell sake or any other alcohol. You are, however, welcomed and in fact encouraged to bring your own. Didn’t think of such ahead of time? Not a problem – there’s a liquor store a stones throw away.
The six of us arrived between 6:30 and 6:50 on a Sunday evening. Including our group there were four tables occupied. Sake Cafe seats about 44 at capacity, with seven tables and eight bar seats. The low but persistent volume level kept away any possibility for uncomfortable silence while allowing discussion at a normal level.
Our servers were remarkably attentive throughout our dinner. On the fine line between attentive and intrusive they edged close to the intrusive side, but never to the point where it became annoying. I once referred to our waitress as a search engine because as soon as she heard one of us reference one of their specials, she immediately came over and explained what it was (anyone who has seen the recent Bing commercials will get the idea). The whole time our tea was refilled without asking or in some cases us even noticing.
The menu is Asian Fusion, with a little under half being devoted to sushi and sashimi and the rest being a good selection of appetizers, soups and salads, noodle bowls, and entrees. Prices tend towards the high end. While most regular rolls are $4.00 to $4.50, specialty rolls are all in the double digits and run as high as $18. Even their lunch specials are almost double what you would expect from your run-of-the-mill take-out joint, not that such a comparison is fair. While you do pay for your food here, you most certainly get what you pay for.
"Treasure Island" appetizer
My date and I split our entire meal. We started with a seafood soup ($6), a “Treasure Island” appetizer (assorted sashimi over half an avocado with spicy sauce, $8), and soft shell crab tempura appetizer (a weekly special, $8). The main course included the “Gozilla” roll (spicy tuna, crabmeat, avocado, deep fried with eel and spicy mayo, $11), a spicy girl roll (spicy crunchy tuna and salmon, topped with spicy crunchy yellowtail, caviar, and a “special sauce”, $13), and two weekly special rolls which are not on the regular menu: a Double Tuna roll (tuna and avocado topped with spicy tuna, $12) and a New Scotland roll (shrimp tempura and avocado topped with spicy salmon, $12).
3 specialty rolls - New Scotland roll, Double Tuna roll, and "Gozilla" roll
The seafood soup was very flavorful and loaded with lobster, although the broth was somewhat reminiscent of the semi-gelatinous lobster sauce that one might get from a cheap Chinese food delivery. The generous portion of soft shell crab tempura came with a brown dipping sauce and the texture and flavor combined into a very pleasurable sensation. As to the rolls – it’s almost not worth going into detail about the individual rolls. All the specialty rolls are absolutely delicious. The fish was very tender, the rolls were large and wrapped well, and the presentation was absolutely exquisite. We all agreed the best was Sauce far transcended its primary purpose of providing flavor and became a Technicolor decoration of lines, swirls, and dots. Others marveled at how delicious an inexpensive sweet potato roll was ($3.50, as are all the vegetarian rolls). The elected champion of night, hands down, was the Kirin roll, a masterpiece of soft shell crab, eel, and tuna ($13). We passed on desert but were shown a selection of very pretty little cakes, color coded to their flavors – mango, strawberry, and peach. We got separate checks and the total for my partner and I was $75.60 before tax and tip.
Kirin roll - best roll of the night
In the end, we all left with the same feeling – the service is very good, the food is excellent, and the presentation is exquisite – but the sushi never really let the fish speak for themselves. Everything was sprinkled with delicious sauces and / or marinated and / or mixed with various spices, and you never really got to taste just how marvelous the raw fish itself may or have been. Of course, you could order the sashimi, and two of us did – the salmon-don was a similarly artistic creation of plentiful amounts of large cuts of raw salmon and a small cake of rice in the shape of a heart. But for those who want sushi, and love sushi for the fish itself, you may be a little let down. Your tongue, however, will convince you to get over it.
4.5 / 5
/CH
The Sake Cafe's sushi bar
The Sake Café is the newest sushi bar in town; it’s so new, you won’t find it on Google Maps quite yet. It’s also so new that they don’t have a liquor license yet, making their name something of a misnomer. They’re certainly set up to accommodate liquor; the sushi bar occupies the left side of a large, classy bar; behind that are two plasma screen TVs perched above shelves ready to hold bottles of liquor, but in the meantime containing only glassware. The overall atmosphere was classy, yet casual.
My disappointment with the lack of sake quickly vanished when I opened the menu. Like most sushi places, they have about 10 special house rolls on the menu, and my eye was immediately drawn to the Spicy Girl roll: spicy crunchy tuna and salmon, topped with spicy crunchy yellowtail and different spicy sauces, with caviar to finish it off ($13). After wondering if it might be (spicy lovers, get ready to roll your eyes) too spicy for my palate, I decided to take my chances and order it, along with a simple sweet potato roll.
The Spicy Girl roll was the right choice. My date, a buffalo wing connoisseur, declared it was the “perfect amount of spiciness.” I, however, wondered if it couldn’t stand to be a bit more spicy, and carefully added tiny daubs of wasabi to a couple of pieces. Overall, it was delicious, and the sauces (including wasabi mayo) really accented the dish without smothering it. This is a good example of a roll that uses spicy flavoring to bring out, rather than hide, the overall flavor. However, next time, I might try ordering it extra spicy.
The biggest surprise, however, was the sweet potato roll I ordered as a side dish. Generally, “vegetable roll” conjures up images of miniscule cucumber rolls that are more of a snack than anything, and the $3.50 price tag gave me no reason to expect otherwise. To my delight, I was served a substantial roll positively stuffed with delicious, sweet (but not too sweet) fried (but not too fried) sweet potato with a drizzle of sauce over it. It was an amazing deal, and I look forward to seeing what the rest of Sake Café’s vegetable rolls have in store.
All in all, the Sake Café is a great sushi restaurant, and I had a wonderful time there. Once they start serving liquor, I think this would be an excellent starting point for a night out at the many bars on the street. I give the Sake Café a 4.3/5.
/AS
Sake Cafe
Dine-in, Take-out
11am – 10:30pm Monday – Friday
11am – 11pm Saturday
12pm – 10:30pm Sunday
273 New Scotland Ave, Albany
(518) 459-6688
http://sakecafealbany.com/
