Had a very good dinner Friday night at Wasabi with a bunch of friends from the board (who ideally can chime in whenever they want!)
The space is divided into two parts: The front take-out area, and the restaurant seating in the rear. The conveyor belt runs down the middle past a few booths and then the bar-style seating. I wasn't expecting the tables, actually. The two positions at each table adjacent to the conveyor belt are positions of thankless responsibility, requiring a quick mind and quicker hands as your own dinner ages while your companions tell you to "Grab that! No, that! Yeah...get that! Quick! Fine...grab the next one..." Personally, I'll stick to the bar.
The fish was all very good, and there was fortunately no shortage of the excellent tuna that Bonz mentioned. I liked the tiradito, which was thin slices of fish quickly cooked with a blowtorch. I liked how the waitress described this as 'good for people who don't like raw fish', but really, it's only a step above 'ceviche' and one or two below 'rare seared tuna block' on the 'How cooked is this fish' scale. The cooked items proved more controversial among the group. I personally kind of liked the chicken karaage and fried calamari, while most disliked their 'basically room temperature' nature. Maybe I've had enough things like this in bento boxes, but non-scalding-hot fried food is alright for me in some contexts. Whether this was by design or from going around a couple times, I'm not sure. This is going to be an issue for them: How long are things left to go around the belt before they are replaced? Sushi either keeps better than it would seem, or has high turnover, but the fish was always fresh-tasting, so no problem there, and same with the tiradito. There were a few anticucho whose sauce was starting to congeal a little (This is one thing I'll have to try on the next visit). $2.00 yellow plates were rare (At one point I saw a stack with cucumber roll on a yellow plate, and on top cucumber roll on [whatever the next more expensive color is]. Watch out for that!). I blame some cheapskate closer to the front of the line gorging on half-price cucumber and asparagus rolls. Desserts were the sort that hold up well: Very tasty strawberries and ginger, which I thought could use more ginger, and green tea mousse. The fruit spring rolls made an early appearance, but by the time we wanted dessert they had not been seen in a while. A note requesting more was drafted and sent to the kitchen via the belt. It is unclear if the note was seen, but eventually more rolls arrived. The human brain is great at picking out patterns, including sequences of dishes you're pretty sure you've seen go by for the last 20 minutes. They'll figure out the pacing and turnover with time, but everything I had tasted perfectly fresh.
Here is a video I took at Wasabi. It is a discussion about 'wasabi' the spice, of all things. FermentEverything took pictures. Hopefully he'll post some!
The fish was good. The fish was very good! As a sushi place, they have succeeded in this most critical of area. As long as the fish is good, everything else is secondary. Actually, 'sushi' refers to the vinegared rice, which some thought was packed in too-large nigiri-form and faulting the sushi robot. I'll pay more attention to the rice next time.
Obligatory Uninformed Selfish Third-Party Superficial Speculation, Unsolicited Armchair Restaurateur Advice, and Nit-Pickery:
* The lunch crowd is going to carry Wasabi. They have a location (that must be costing a fortune) right by the Metro, but not near anything else. There is little reason to be in that area at night unless you are specifically going to Wasabi or other nearby restaurant, so there is little chance of the random 'Hey, let's go to Wasabi', 'in the area for general entertainment and decide they want sushi' crowd. There is a large potential lunch crowd in that area, and likely an affluent one. This is good, because while not extremely expensive, Wasabi isn't cheap, either. If I ate half as much for lunch as dinner, cutting out the 'Why not...we're here to try stuff out', second dessert, and going easier on the excellent sashimi, one could probably have a good lunch for about $25 eating in. We were seated immediately so I didn't get a chance to look at the take-out sushi boxes to see what you got, but they top out at $12. Cheaper than Kaz bento, but time will tell and I'm optimistic! I'd really like some 'Cheaper than Kaz but better than Sushi Express' lunch sushi! Personally, I'd like to see prices dropped between $0.25 and $0.50/plate, but that may well not be workable. On the other hand, the kaiten-aspect makes it easy to go in, sit down, and immediately start lunch rather than the unworkable (for we unlettered plebes who have to clock out and in for an hour lunch) 90-minutes-last-time lunch at Kaz.
* They are going to have to work on patron turnover. At the end, I was chilling out for at least half an hour without eating anything...that just can't happen in kaitenzushi! You need people in, fed, and out to free up stools! This is an even faster version of one of the original fast foods, a fact that the American dining public isn't likely to appreciate, but really, they need to eat and run! This isn't France: Your table in any restaurant generally isn't yours for the night, but damn sure your stool isn't yours for more than about 45 minutes minutes! Eat your heart out, Ray! The restaurant simply isn't big enough to allow people to linger like we did. Maybe it was different because it was a special night, but the people in the next seating needed places to sit! That said, I can't imagine a kaiten place taking reservations. It just doesn't work like that!
* Plate labeling: Many plates were unlabeled. Generally this wasn't a problem (I can spot tuna sashimi at 40 paces!), but there was one roll that went unidentified all night. It might have been eel. I tasted one, and I'm not entirely sure what it was. I forget if anybody asked what it was, if only to solve the mystery, but if they are going to label, they need to consistently. On the other hand, when 'some kind of flan or something' became, once a labeled one appeared, 'green tea mousse' (What, it wasn't green...not a big deal. Good key lime pie isn't...the gari wasn't pink either, which means it's the good stuff. It looked like some kind of flan, or something) I bought a plate I otherwise would have let pass, and was glad I did! The bowls of strawberries and ginger were attractive enough to sell themselves, identified or not!
* Kaitenzushi etiquette and protocol: This is a form of dining to which the majority of Americans are likely unaccustomed, and one with nonintuitive protocol and community standards. While there, I noticed several unscrupulous diners (Several of whom, I hesitate to add, were in the very party with which I was dining, a group I would generally expect better of!):
Collude with patrons further back on the line for advance notice when desired items were on the way. And..AND entreaties to let said items pass!
Grab items from the far side of the loop from where they are sitting
Take items they initially passed, but later, full of regretful longing, asked somebody else further down the line to take by proxy.
Return plate covers placed in a wholly improper 'open side down' position for return to the kitchen.
Use the conveyor belt as an intra-group communications channel
Waylay and manipulate stacks of covers en-route back to the kitchen.
This sort of thing simply cannot be tolerated in a civilized kaiten-society. Maybe a table tent can be placed at interval on the conveyor belt explaining things.
Executive Summary: Wasabi is good. Go there. You'll have fun, and very good sushi!
Open already!
Update:
I was in the area, following up a hot tip on a Cuban sandwich, from a place I was pretty sure would be closed, but I went anyway, and they were closed, so I thought I'd roll by to see what was up at Wasabi. Here's the situation:
1) Takeout operation seems open. Place didn't LOOK open, but it was a '...on the other hand, there's food in the cases, so it must be for SOMEBODY!' situation, so I chanced it. As far as 'how much does lunch cost?' I got a tiradito and a salmon nigiri combo for $9.25. That'll work! (Oh, and um...half price deal is still in effect... )
2) The little sign on the door states that the place will be open for business Wednesday.
