Korean Sushi vs Japanese Sushi

The closest place to get sushi with decent prices near our house is Shogun, aka Slogun. Sorry folks, no website to reference. It's definitely one of the most interesting places to have a meal. The service is super slow, thus the nickname. It's even more slow when they're not busy. The best place to be seated is the bar since you'll get food faster that way. The irony of it all is that the place is always super busy come dinner time. The majority of people who go there know that the place is notorious for their service. My roommates and I wanted to go there one night so I decided to make reservations, knowing that we'd wait for a few minutes anyway. (The longest we'd ever waited there was about an hour. Don't ask me why we did that.) We get there, and I still had to haggle to get a table even when our name was on their reservation list. The food is decent. We always order their monkey brains dish which consists of tempura fried mushrooms stuffed with spicy tuny and topped with teriyaki sauce, I think. It's that nice mix of spicy, crunchy and sweet goodness that goes down warm in your throat. Another roll we always get is the Sunset roll which I think contains unagi on top and I can't remember what's in the roll. That comes with teriyaki sauce on top, as well so that roll gets done like it was never even ordered. According to my dearest, this place is owned by Koreans. Not being around Koreans my whole life, I can't tell the difference until we went to a Japanese owned sushi restaurant in Seattle.

Ototo's is a Japanese restaurant situated in the Queen Anne area of Seattle. Thanks to my friend, Dominique, who decided to pick that neighborhood to live in. The food and total dining experience was stupendous! It was just as crowded as Slogun but the service was uncomparable. The executive chef was definitely Japanese and proudly had his certificate from Le Cordon Bleu hung in the dining area. It won great praises from Citysearch.com in 2002 & 2003 and continues to strive for great customer satisfaction. Dom, Joe and I conveniently sat the bar and watched the chefs churn our sushi rolls and sushi one by one. We were even given a taste of some kind of sashimi creation one of the chefs decided to make after we were seated. We started with the unagi spring rolls


courtesty of www.ototosushi.com

and the tuna poke. Everything was as fresh as can be. We skipped the sushi and sashimi since we were more interested in their rolls. But if anyone else goes there, let me know what the otoro is like. Since I've started reading Anthony Bourdain's "A Cook's Tour," I've wanted to try otoro. For those who don't know, it's the fattiest part of the tuna's belly, which also makes it one of the most tastey. Dom, being the salmon loving, Seattle native that she is, ordered the Salmon Deluxe roll, I went for the futomaki and Joe ordered the Spider Roll with soft-shell crab, cucumber, avocado and smelt roe. The latter also happened to be the most popular for the evening since we saw so many come off the cutting board of the sushi chef working in front of us. The salmon was nice and buttery and the Spider Roll had great texture and flavor. Since soft shell crab is so limited in our part of the woods, I like ordering it whenever I get a chance. We topped our food euphoria with the Green Tea Tiramisu.


courtesy of www.ototosushi.com

It was fine but was definitely missing the liquore. It needed that little kick, maybe some amarretto, even a little caramel liquore. It was a nice little calming dessert after all the flavors we had tasted that evening so maybe having it without the liquore was a good thing.

The art of the food was definitely highlighted more so at Ototo's in comparison to that at Slogun's. I'd prefer going to a place like Ototo's, where the food is respected more, than to a place where the focus is on the food gaining profit.