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All-You-Can-Eat Sushi
Dec. 10th, 2007 11:44 pmWe went to see the Dayton's Marshall Field's Macy's Christmas Show this evening. This is a Minneapolis tradition that goes back to the 1960s; every December, at the big downtown store, they have a show with a bunch of costumed animatronic figures acting out a fairy tale or some other familiar story. This year was the Nutcracker. For future reference, Monday at 4:30 is an excellent time to go to this; there was no line.
Last year, we ate at the Oak Grill, the fancy restaurant on the 12th floor. It was terrible. The girls enjoyed it, in part because they got free mugs which they still use regularly, but the service was utterly scattered and disorganized and the food was terrible. Ed and I decided we weren't going back.
Instead, we took the bus down to the other end of Nicollet Mall and went to Ichiban Steakhouse. Ichiban is best known for their teppanyaki style cookery, with performance-artist chefs who set fires and juggle knives, but separate from the teppanyaki tables, they also have all-you-can-eat sushi.
A slight tangent, before I continue: I've known for years that Ichiban Steakhouse has all-you-can-eat sushi, though I think it used to just be one night a week, but (a) the $29/person cost seemed like a lot for a child's meal, (b) I wasn't sure how child-friendly they were, and (c) I heard from somewhere that they got cranky if you ate the fish but left the rice, something both girls tend to do. Back in October sometime, I sent a letter to the restaurant reviewer at the City Pages, Dara Moskowitz Grundahl, asking for suggestions of interesting restaurants that are good places to take kids (as long as they're well behaved and adventurous eaters), and also asking about family-friendly sushi options. The problem with a regular sushi restaurant is that the food tends to take a really long time to come. She told me that (a) Ichiban has a children's rate for the sushi, (b) they're quite friendly to families, and (c) they don't get cranky about kids eating the fish but not the rice. And then she ran the letter in a column with much more detail plus a bunch of restaurant suggestions. So if you saw this column and wondered if there was another Naomi in Minneapolis with sushi-eating children, no, that was me.
Back to the trip to Ichiban:
There was a jet of flame from a nearby grill as we were talking to the hostess, and Molly and Kiera both exclaimed, "fire!" and wanted to go check it out, but when they heard that their options were fire, or sushi, they both chose sushi.
The way it works is that you sit at an oval sushi bar, and the sushi floats past you in little boats. Each boat has a couple of little dishes on it, and if something looks good, you snag it as it goes by. It really does float by -- the miniature boats are in a miniature canal with a current that keeps things moving. You can also have the waiter bring you tempura, gyoza, or chicken wings. There were two sushi chefs, who were making sushi more or less in rotation -- you'd get a whole lot of salmon floating by, and then a whole lot of calamari, and then a whole lot of tuna. In addition, some of the boats had dishes with edamame, pickled cucumbers, and various odds and ends that I don't actually know what they were, like the green shredded crunchy stuff. Plus wasabi and ginger.
Molly and Kiera had only ever gotten to order sushi off a menu, and I was startled by how adventurous Kiera was when she could take her pick. She snagged several strange-looking rolls to try, and only rejected the ones with hidden wasabi. When the sushi chef noticed that she was pulling salmon off the rice to avoid the dab of wasabi, she passed us a dish of wasabi-free salmon for Kiera. Kiera also had a dish of the pickled cucumbers, and a bunch of edamame, which she got really into once she figured out how to squeeze them out of their shells.
Molly ate a bunch of sushi, but her favorite thing at this meal was the edamame. She's had edamame before but today she took dish after dish after dish of it. I buy shelled edamame and use them in some dishes (mostly Italian -- they're a pretty good substitute for fava beans), but I don't often serve them up in the shell. I will have to add them to my grocery list. It would be easy enough to boil them up for her for snack.
Molly's favorite sushi was, I think, the one with the rippled edge. I don't know what kind of fish that was -- octopus, maybe? Kiera's favorite was the same as mine -- a fish that changed color from white to pink, fastened to its rice with a seaweed seatbelt. I don't know what this was, either, but I found a site with a picture that says it's izumidai, or tilapia, but this is a substitute for red snapper, so maybe it was red snapper? I don't know. I've never seen red tilapia. I also really liked the calamari -- I'd never had calamari as sushi before. The tuna and salmon were mediocre but the rolls were varied and excellent and I really liked some of the fish I hadn't gotten to try before.
It was a blast. The girls loved the fact that they could try anything they saw, rather than having to order off a menu. The chef was clearly delighted by the girls and their enjoyment of the sushi. It would be fun to go back sometime for teppanyaki, but the girls both said that they'd want to get the sushi again, and to heck with watching people set stuff on fire.
Last year, we ate at the Oak Grill, the fancy restaurant on the 12th floor. It was terrible. The girls enjoyed it, in part because they got free mugs which they still use regularly, but the service was utterly scattered and disorganized and the food was terrible. Ed and I decided we weren't going back.
Instead, we took the bus down to the other end of Nicollet Mall and went to Ichiban Steakhouse. Ichiban is best known for their teppanyaki style cookery, with performance-artist chefs who set fires and juggle knives, but separate from the teppanyaki tables, they also have all-you-can-eat sushi.
A slight tangent, before I continue: I've known for years that Ichiban Steakhouse has all-you-can-eat sushi, though I think it used to just be one night a week, but (a) the $29/person cost seemed like a lot for a child's meal, (b) I wasn't sure how child-friendly they were, and (c) I heard from somewhere that they got cranky if you ate the fish but left the rice, something both girls tend to do. Back in October sometime, I sent a letter to the restaurant reviewer at the City Pages, Dara Moskowitz Grundahl, asking for suggestions of interesting restaurants that are good places to take kids (as long as they're well behaved and adventurous eaters), and also asking about family-friendly sushi options. The problem with a regular sushi restaurant is that the food tends to take a really long time to come. She told me that (a) Ichiban has a children's rate for the sushi, (b) they're quite friendly to families, and (c) they don't get cranky about kids eating the fish but not the rice. And then she ran the letter in a column with much more detail plus a bunch of restaurant suggestions. So if you saw this column and wondered if there was another Naomi in Minneapolis with sushi-eating children, no, that was me.
Back to the trip to Ichiban:
There was a jet of flame from a nearby grill as we were talking to the hostess, and Molly and Kiera both exclaimed, "fire!" and wanted to go check it out, but when they heard that their options were fire, or sushi, they both chose sushi.
The way it works is that you sit at an oval sushi bar, and the sushi floats past you in little boats. Each boat has a couple of little dishes on it, and if something looks good, you snag it as it goes by. It really does float by -- the miniature boats are in a miniature canal with a current that keeps things moving. You can also have the waiter bring you tempura, gyoza, or chicken wings. There were two sushi chefs, who were making sushi more or less in rotation -- you'd get a whole lot of salmon floating by, and then a whole lot of calamari, and then a whole lot of tuna. In addition, some of the boats had dishes with edamame, pickled cucumbers, and various odds and ends that I don't actually know what they were, like the green shredded crunchy stuff. Plus wasabi and ginger.
Molly and Kiera had only ever gotten to order sushi off a menu, and I was startled by how adventurous Kiera was when she could take her pick. She snagged several strange-looking rolls to try, and only rejected the ones with hidden wasabi. When the sushi chef noticed that she was pulling salmon off the rice to avoid the dab of wasabi, she passed us a dish of wasabi-free salmon for Kiera. Kiera also had a dish of the pickled cucumbers, and a bunch of edamame, which she got really into once she figured out how to squeeze them out of their shells.
Molly ate a bunch of sushi, but her favorite thing at this meal was the edamame. She's had edamame before but today she took dish after dish after dish of it. I buy shelled edamame and use them in some dishes (mostly Italian -- they're a pretty good substitute for fava beans), but I don't often serve them up in the shell. I will have to add them to my grocery list. It would be easy enough to boil them up for her for snack.
Molly's favorite sushi was, I think, the one with the rippled edge. I don't know what kind of fish that was -- octopus, maybe? Kiera's favorite was the same as mine -- a fish that changed color from white to pink, fastened to its rice with a seaweed seatbelt. I don't know what this was, either, but I found a site with a picture that says it's izumidai, or tilapia, but this is a substitute for red snapper, so maybe it was red snapper? I don't know. I've never seen red tilapia. I also really liked the calamari -- I'd never had calamari as sushi before. The tuna and salmon were mediocre but the rolls were varied and excellent and I really liked some of the fish I hadn't gotten to try before.
It was a blast. The girls loved the fact that they could try anything they saw, rather than having to order off a menu. The chef was clearly delighted by the girls and their enjoyment of the sushi. It would be fun to go back sometime for teppanyaki, but the girls both said that they'd want to get the sushi again, and to heck with watching people set stuff on fire.
