Sushi Town

This week’s AveEater: Mike

Listen, I’m a man who like’s convenient things.  I’m basically a Utilitarian, in the sense that I prefer things that are practical rather than attractive. I’m racing toward old man status with gusto, not because I feel old, but because I’m looking forward to a time when I can make the practical decisions that I enjoy with no fear of social reprisal.  I would probably wear sweatpants regularly if it were socially acceptable.  I look forward to napping whenever I please.

There is no more practical or convenient lunch spot than the conveyor belt sushi establishment.  You walk in the door, they usher you to a booth – who doesn’t love a booth? – and you just sit there and grab the food that looks tasty as it goes by.  It doesn’t get any more convenient than that.  Oh wait, it does: They color code the dish to indicate the price.  If you’re a cheap bastard like me, you load up on cucumber rolls on green plates.  If you’re fancy like Lauren, you eat Seattle rolls (what even is that?) on black plates. Everybody wins!

There is a dude busily making sushi in the open kitchen and when he’s done with said sushi, he foists it onto the aforementioned color coded dish.  So it is with great joy that watch the plates go by and evaluate my sushi moves.  It’s like chess, only your stomach is playing your wallet.  And you get to eat the pieces.

Ambiance: 

Sushi Town really went for it when they moved in.  They went full on industrial, newage-y.  It’s black walls and rusted metal chandeliers.  That doesn’t sound too good, but I find that it works for the place.  It’s in a basement, so it’s never gonna have great natural light, why not double down on the vibe?  I say kudos to Sushi Town for having a vision.

The put the sushi chefs front and center, so you can watch them work their magic.  I feel like this would make me feel a little exposed and vulnerable if I were a sushi chef, but then, maybe that’s why I’m not a sushi chef.

Cleanliness:

Perhaps it’s just because the place is relatively new, but there is a glossy sheen to Sushi Town that makes the place feel like it’s a hip club from a 1980’s film starring Andrew

McCarthy.  That’s not a bad thing.  It’s probably a good thing.

Colon Consequences:

I’ve never actually eaten a piece of sushi that I didn’t like on some level, so maybe I’m not being adventurous enough with my sushi consumption, because it does seem like things could easily take a quick turn for the disastrous if you choose poorly (it is raw fish after all), but I always find sushi to be far less hard on the ole GI tract than just about anything.  Sushi Town is no exception to that. I  walked away pleasantly satiated

Originality/Surprises:

What I particularly appreciate about S-Town is that there are a couple of friendly but not pushy younger folks at the front who are happy to take an order for anything that the house makes if you don’t see it on the conveyor.  This is a nice touch.

I kinda thought this was standard at conveyor belt places, but then I went to a shittier conveyor belt place up north (which shall remain nameless) and ordered some stuff from an overworked waiter shilling drinks to patrons and immediately felt like a pompous ass.  Such is my life.

Taste:

Listen, this isn’t Nashino or Maneki. But then, I don’t want it to be.  I want to get in, eat 6 adequately prepared crunchy tofu rolls (my fave!)

and get out.  The fish is fresh enough and the options are many.  You’re gonna find something tasty.

Ave Factor:

S-Town is not exactly brimming with Ave Factor.  Most of that is that it is just new, but the aforementioned industrial, newage-y feel doesn’t really help in this particular category. I don’t yet know if I’d call it a trend, but it seems like many of the new ave restaurants are a little better bankrolled than the last decade.  That will probably help in their staying power, but it steals a little from the plucky, slightly dingy Ave Factor.  Change is the only constant on the Ave people! Get used to it.

Value:

Here’s where Sushi Town excels.  If you know what you’re doing, you can leave brimming with sushi for less than 8 bucks, that’s a screaming deal.

I give it 8/10 Chess pieces

The Awkward Photos!

Our avid readers (Hi Tim!) will notice that Lauren has bangs, making these photos from early 2016.  Yup, that’s how far behind we are in posting.

Here’s hoping this makes you feel better about your own procrastination.  – EUTA team

#SushiTown

 

Best of Bento

This weeks AveEater: Mike

This week we delve into one of the great mysteries that has faced AveEaters the world over:  What is the Best of Bento?

For those readers outside the pacific rim, Bento is a single-portion takeout, dine in,  or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. The bento shop (弁当屋 bentō-ya) is about as familiar to a Seattleite as a coffee shop, or a hipster on a dutch bike (your move Eykemans!)  In a bento box, the food is sequestered into different sections of the specialized tray, like a dream of your 10-year old self, insuring that the peas don’t touch the mashed potatoes.

Could it be that the best bento on the Ave has  been right under our noses this whole time, beckoning us with its very appellation?  Of course, you wouldn’t know that, because they’ve elected to cover their rather boastful sobriquet with a banner illuminating an immense variety of delicacies in so many fonts that you’ll think you were at a convention for the society of typographic aficionados (You think I’m making this up don’t you?).

Perhaps they are so confident in their status as the premiere bento on the Ave that further bluster would only serve to turn people away, and they may as well lure you in with as many serifs (or lack thereof) as possible, I’m not sure.

 

Ambiance: 

The Best of Bento has a warm feeling to it that I rather enjoy, some faux wood paneling and good lighting, along with the lively chatter of a place often filled with hungry people devouring compartmentalized cuisine.  But this feeling of warmth actually betrays the fact that it’s actually quite cold in there in the winter months.  (This is a theme we seem to be revisiting, which I think has mostly to do with the lack of vestibules on the ave and the cost of heating the place.  Alas, commercial rent and increasing energy costs are too much for this blog to tackle).  The BoB (I shall forever use this moniker), however, has an ingenious way of combating the cold – free tea!  I’m not a coffee drinker myself, so free tea is enough to get me in the door.

The staff is working hard to classify all those foods into their appropriate subdivisions, and serve all those hungry guests, so the service can occasionally be a little surly.  That seems a small price to pay for what might in fact be the best of bento.

Cleanliness:

There is an efficiency to the BoB that seems to contribute to its cleanliness.  People come and go and workers emerge from the kitchen area to scrub and bus tables.  All teriyaki joints seem to just feel a bit sticky – it must be all the sugar in the sauce, but the BoB has managed to survive all these years in a mostly pleasant state.

Colon Consequences:

I feel nothing but the sweet joy of satiation.

Originality/Surprises:

You don’t go into the BoB expecting a lot of surprises and so your expectations are set accordingly when those surprises don’t materialize.  However, I would say that if there is a surprise to behold, it’s that the sushi isn’t half bad.  Now would probably be a good time to reveal that Lauren has an extreme distaste for Teriyaki Chicken – the staple of the bento box. She says it has something to do with the crispy/stabby bits that are left when they cook it, but to be honest I’m usually not paying attention because all I can think about is how delicious teriyaki chicken is. 

With that in mind, just getting Lauren to walk through the door of a teriyaki place is kind of a small triumph.  To her immense delight, the BoB offers a quite scrumptious and well plated array of Sushi to choose from.  She describes it as fresh and not-too-pricey.  Surprise!

 

 

 

 

Taste:

The BoB delivers.  Not in some grandiose way where you’re gonna tell your friends from out of town to visit, but there’s a reason all those people are in there every day.  It’s damn fine bento at a reasonable price. The sauce is sweet without being cloying (though I would prefer it if they had those giant squeeze bottles – I always have to ask for more sauce in a dish, and that feels shameful somehow).  Tom describes the tofu as “nice” which I take to mean satisfying and creamy.  They do have some sort of odd Italian seasoning-mixed-with-cayenne-pepper concoction in a salt shaker that I can’t say I recommend, but that’s up to you.  In general, you won’t be disappointed.

Ave Factor:

The BoB is ripe with Ave Factor.  Part of Ave Factor is just persistence. If your establishment has been around long enough, it just begins to soak up the ave and it becomes a part of the landscape that new establishments have to conform to.  The BoB fits very nicely into that landscape.  I would even say it’s “charming.”  But it’s also something to do with individuality.  There are no other BoB’s (that I know of and I don’t care to do the research) and so many different places with so much character so close to one another are what gives the Ave its unique appeal. The BoB contributes to that.  Good for the BoB.  If I’m looking to give someone a genuine Ave experience, I know that I can rely on the BoB

Value:

a filling bento box for about $7-8.  That’s a good deal in my book.

 

The awkward photos!

 

(hey, there’s that famous architect guy! He likes the BoB too!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

U:DON

Sorry for our hiatus, we’ve just been so busy basking in the glory of one of the best Seattle summers we can collectively remember.  Rest assured, we continue to eat up the ave, we just haven’t gotten around to posting about it.  We’ll fill the backlog we promise.

This week’s AveEater: Tim

There are so many places to get a bowl of noodles on the Ave!  It’s mind boggling.  I can think of 4 Phở places right off the top of my head.  But moving from Vietnamese northeastward to Japanese cuisine, the options traditionally have been a bit sparser on the Ave.  But now there’s a good (newish) spot for udon.  It’s even called U:Don! It’s a local “fresh Japanese noodle station” and it’s pretty darn good!

Service: the whole operation is very orderly, organized and streamlined. At the start, when you line up to order, it felt a bit like a cafeteria but only in habit, not in its form.  You pick things à la carte to go with your soup and choose which kind of noodle etc.  Then they ring you up at the end of the counter and you sit.  I think we bused our own table at the end.

Ambiance: It’s perfunctory, austere – in that Japanese stark, no-fuss way.  We sat on minimalistic backless cubes.  There were lots of lines and right angles.  I don’t remember any music.

Cleanliness:  Crazy clean.  Both looking and feeling.  Prolly due to the fact that it’s fairly new and designed to be pristine and spare.

Colon Consequences:  None.  Just good soup.

just good soup

Originality/Surprises:  The hot soup is hotter than the hoochie coochie.   Beware!

Hot!

Taste:  I was disappointed that there wasn’t something to make the regular soup offerings hotter.  Sriracha or some other hot sauce would have been nice.  There was only one spicy soup on the menu.  The rest of the options were pretty tame.  I would have like the option to spice my soup up a bit but not have my eyes and nose run.

Ave Factor: Zero.  This feels like a restaurant that would be in Wallingford.

I give it 8.5 out of 10 noodles!

lastly, one of the best awkward photos ever!

awkward