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Best fresh sushi spot
| Thursday, Oct 24 2002 10:00 PM
Last Updated: Friday, Feb 10 2006 10:23 AM
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The best sushi place in town could well be a low-profile Japanese restaurant in a strip shopping center in the shadow of Highway 99.
Sushi Kato, located next to the 24 Hour Fitness on Rosedale Highway, is the kind of place you might miss if you didn't know it was there. It's just west of the flashy DoubleTree Hotel, across the street from the more prominent Hungry Hunter and within the flashy neon light zone of John's Incredible Pizza.
The dining room is small, the atmosphere does not exactly send you back to the Orient, but my experiences there have convinced me that the freshness of the fish is unmatched.
I was talking to a colleague who I knew to be a Sushi Kato supporter. This man has enjoyed sushi in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and particularly praised the sea urchin and the Philly roll.
"The sea urchin tastes like foie gras," he said, referring to the rich goose liver specialty. "His Philly has less cucumber with the cream cheese, more of the spicy fish eggs. It's unique."
On our first visit, I ordered one of the combination plates so I could try both the raw and cooked fish. The salmon teriyaki and sashimi combination ($16.95) was the perfect opportunity for that. My companion chose the chicken yakitori and tempura combo plate ($14.95). There were no seats available at the 10-seat sushi bar on this weekend night, but only half the tables in the small dining room were full.
Our dinners were presented in the compartmentalized boxes that included a decent ginger salad, a cold cucumber salad, incredibly soft and moist rice and the entrees. The three portions of salmon teriyaki were almost undercooked, but I found that appealing, compared to the dry texture of some grilled salmon I've sampled recently. My sashimi (raw fish without rice) included more of the salmon (beautifully marbled, almost too pretty to eat), flawless tuna and some seared ahi tuna. A feast at that price.
My companion's chicken was presented on skewers, a mixture of both white and dark meat with a velvety teriyaki sauce (the same one used on my salmon) and an assortment of tempura that included two shrimp, yam, broccoli and eggplant.
The variety of sushi is pretty impressive: 29 two-piece items, half a dozen hand rolls and 30 other rolls, including grilled salmonskin, snow crab and the Super California.
I'm partial to the spicy tuna roll ($5.25), but the albacore ($4.75) and the blue fin tuna ($5.50) were also impressive. Sushi Kato is something of an eel specialist, too, offering a mean eel and avocado roll ($4.95) and an eel steak dinner ($19.95) which is barbecued.
But then again, that's not exactly sushi.
As I said, people don't really visit for the atmosphere. A TV in the corner was tuned to a college football game, but jazz was playing overhead to add a more sophisticated note to the ambience. The walls are concrete, but there are a few wall coverings.
I suspect that with the authenticity of the food, customers are blind to these flaws.
One caveat: My buddy above did not have a good experience there on a Monday.
The vaunted freshness of the fish was completely gone. I'm reminded of the warning in the book "Kitchen Confidential" to never order seafood on a Monday, particularly the specials. Deliveries for fresh seafood on that day are rare, and chefs are sometimes trying to move whatever was left unsold from the weekend. Even the best can be humbled on that day.
Sushi Kato can be recommended for a fine dining experience.