Sushi for supper

For our Saturday-night date this weekend, Blaine and I went to Sushizen, a sushi restaurant on the 46th floor of the Caretta Shiodome building.

Sushizen is a Tokyo branch (as they say in Japan) of a much-praised restaurant in the city of Sapporo in Hokkaido. It's in Shiodome, a onetime rail freightyard near Ginza and Tokyo Bay that was redeveloped in the past decade as a "city within a city" that now has 13 skyscrapers.

I had lunch at Sushizen a few months ago with my friends Maryam Mohit and Erik Blachford, and I thought Blaine would enjoy it, too. Seriously delicious sushi - even better if you can sit at the counter and watch the chefs. The basic dinner is salad, 10 pieces of sushi, miso soup, and sorbet for 5250 yen (about $50) per person. A more elaborate 12-sushi plate is about $75/person. And there's a $100/person meal, too.

Here's our 10-plate, for two:


Top row, from left: kanpachi (amberjack), maguro (tuna), kohada (gizzard shad, with lovely silvery skin), bakagai (orange clam). Middle row: ama-ebi (sweet raw shrimp), uni (sea urchin roe), kegani (Hokkaido hairy crab), tai (sea bream). Bottom row: awabi (sea snail, I think), unagi (freshwater eel).

Miso soup was served in this silver lacquerware bowl.



And green tea and delightful green-apple sorbet for dessert.