Capital Sushi

We’ve moved! Check us out at www.capital-sushi.com

capitalsushi — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 04:37:11 +0000

We’re set up, we finished migrating all the content, and we’ll be posting all updates to the new site from here on in. To continue to fulfill all your sushi desires, come check out the site at www.capital-sushi.com!

How dare you lie to me, Google!

capitalsushi — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 00:16:21 +0000

Since I live in Troy, I was super excited and incredibly surprised to see another sushi restaurant pop up on the Google search results for Sushi near Troy – Jeon’s Tokyo Sushi Inc. While I was a bit confounded by the “Inc” part, which is definitely not something you would expect to see in the name of a restaurant, I thought it would be worth investigating.

. . . It’s an office for rent.

Google is not the only site to be fooled. Search for Jeon’s Tokyo Sushi Inc and you’ll find that even the locally knowledgeable Times Union is fooled, as are a bunch of other pages which aren’t worth mentioning and probably just aggregate restaurant info off of Google.

But it has a phone number! … A phone number that rings 15 times and then gives a full mailbox message.

Now I’ve been in the area for not a brief period of time, and I have never seen a sushi place there. Google would not have a relic hanging around many years after its closing (plus, I think it was a doctor’s office at some point which would have bumped the previous occupant off the map) nor would even the mighty Google know about a restaurant that may potentially be opening before what seems to be anyone else.

So what is Jeon’s Tokyo Sushi Inc? The mystery remains unsolved…

/CH

Sake Cafe

capitalsushi — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:14:22 +0000

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/

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Sushi House

capitalsushi — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 22:06:06 +0000

Overall: 4/5

Walking down New Scotland, it’s easy to pass right by Sushi House. If you didn’t notice that one of the names emblazoned on the large backlit awning said “SUSHI HOUSE”, you could easily miss it entirely. Far more attention-grabbing is the attached “CHINA HOUSE”, with which it shares an awning (not to mention one with the same color, number of letters in the name, and font) and whose Chinese-take-out-standard giant picture menu hanging above a to-go counter encircled by large glass windows on the corner sends glowing flourescent light into the street. Not so surprising that the door just to the North, which leads into a small, quaint sit-down restaurant, is easily missed in favor of its glowing, attention-grabbing, take-out screaming neighbor. The little Sushi House is certainly worth noticing, though.

Upon entry, you will likely be struck by just how small the place is – there are only six tables and a small sushi bar, and the entire place seats a whole 26 people. The low lighting lends to an intimate, if not a bit sleepy feel. The decor is pleasantly Japanese, and from what you would expect having seen the outside of the place, almost “nice” (although certainly not worth any specific praise).

My date and I wandered in at about 9:45PM, and we were one of two tables the entire time. The menu was impressive for a hole-in-the-wall – 5 pages of sushi, sashimi, appetizers, soups, lunch specials, and entrees that don’t consist of raw fish, and desserts. The menu was reasonably priced – even the specialty rolls averaged about $8.50. The wine list was house wine by the glass only, they had a whole two beers (Asahi and Sapporo, of course), and they had a modest sake menu consisting of five different 300ml bottles (all $7.95) along with a cheap house sake.

The best deal in the place – and if nothing else the reason to go – are the sashimi combos. I got the imperial sashimi, the largest of the sashimi combos, which consists of 21 pieces of sashimi (chef’s choice), miso soup, and salad – all for a whole $18.95. I also ordered a forest roll: one of the specials consisting of white tuna, cucumber, crabmeat, avocado, and roast pork inside, eel, lettuce, and massago outside. My lovely date ordered a lobster miso soup (unlike many places, miso is not included with rolls), a holiday roll (crabmeat, shrimp, cucumber inside, roast port, avocado, massago outside, with a side of spicy mayo), and a spicy tuna roll. Unlike at many places, the spicy tuna roll at Sushi House is not just a regular roll of marinated tuna, but rather has an inside of tuna, cucumber, avocado, and crabstick, and is covered in a healthy dollop of their “spicy tuna” – a ground composite of tuna, scallions, spices, and their spicy sauce. A bottle of Yaegaki sake topped it off.

We quickly realized that we shouldn’t expect too much from the service since they never set the table with napkins and chop sticks (we stole some from a vacant neighboring table) and the first roll that was brought out was not the correct one (they took it back and got the correct one with little delay). Aside from those distracting but otherwise forgivable mishaps, the night was filled with pleasant surprises. The hot tea, which unlike the miso is indeed free, was very fresh and tasty, with the little bits of debris in our cups serving as evidence that it was freshly brewed from loose leaves. While my salad and miso were standard issue, my date’s lobster miso ($2.95) was “really good”, with the little pieces of lobster infusing the broth with the delicious flavor of fresh lobster. The sushi itself was well-presented and the rolls were quite large. Her holiday roll was smothered in generous slabs of buttery avocado and ended in explosions of crabmeat out the sides. As generous as the portions of avocado on her holiday roll were the portions of eel on the exterior of my forest roll – there were two sizable cuts of eel running the length of the roll. In both, I looked for the flavor of the roast pork, which I was hoping would be a pleasingly interesting addition. I never found the pork to provide anything but the slightest hint of flavor – certainly too little to meaningly contribute – playing more of a roll in the texture by adding a pleasant crunch to two otherwise fairly “soft” rolls. The spicy tuna roll was marvelous, and a distinct break from the “norm”, being both well larger and far more complex than what you may expect (although you pay much more for it as well – $8.95 – more than most specialty rolls, although they have a “normal” spicy tuna option for about $4).

My 21 pieces of sashimi were a pleasant variety – both red and white tuna, yellowtail, octopus, salmon, mackerel, halibut, and a little bonus piece of shrimp that was more a garnish than anything. Most of the sashimi was very pleasantly fresh and tender, most notably the yellowtail which I could have easily chopped into little pieces with a spoon. The mackerel lacked the quality of the tuna, yellowtail, and salmon, but was still good, however the halibut left a lot to be desired – it was a little tough, tasted a bit stale, and felt dry in the mouth. That being the only bad part, it was still quite a steal for $19.

Going along with the genuinely mediocre service, we were never asked if we wanted dessert or anything else after dinner, and were given the delivered the check, without requesting it, almost 10 minutes before we were done. In the end, however, we had a good, enjoyable meal for $57.19 before tip (it should be noted that we were undercharged for the sake – it was $7.95 but we were charged the price of the generic sake, $3.50).

If you’re not feeling too snobbish for the neighborhood and don’t mind dealing with parking on the South side of Washington Park, then you’ll be pleasantly surprised by good food and very reasonable prices at this quaint little hole-in the wall. Even if you are feeling a bit snobbish but you live in the area – they deliver. Either way, it’s certainly worth it.

/CH

Sushi House

Dine-in, take-out, and delivery.

Tuesday – Thursday 11AM – 10PM
Friday 11AM – 11PM
Saturday & Sunday 4 – 11PM
Closed Monday, closed 3-4PM every day.

6 New Scotland Ave., Albany
(518) 935-2270
No website.

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