Not sure if this is the right place, but I thought I'd let you know how well your sushi bar tactics worked for me this evening. I've been eating sushi for decades, ever since the dinner when I snagged a piece of my mom's tuna maki and got hooked. In Honolulu I had a standing dinner date with my favorite sushi chef and ate whatever he put in front of me, some of it quite adventurous. But that was in a state where good fish and basic knowledge of the food was just assumed, so I don't think my experience there was extraordinary. Now I live in a culinary wasteland where I can get good Mexican, but not any form of decent Asian cuisine and the only local veggies I can get are grown in my backyard. I had noticed a sushi place close to my house tucked in a run-down strip mall and decided to give it a shot tonight, but i wasn't expecting much. I was early, and the only person at the bar, right across from the older gentleman behind the counter. I asked if they had Toro, which surprised the chef. He smiled, said he did and mentioned that he also had A-gi, just flown in from Japan. I didn't remember having that before, but he said "If you know to eat Toro, you will like A-gi." Which is how I ended up with a whole (small, thankfully) fish skewered on bamboo, with the sashimi sliced and laid out along the body, topped with fresh ginger and scallions. It was really, really good. I had started in on the Toro, when an older gentleman walked out from the back and towards the front of the restaurant. My chef called out that I had liked the A-gi, and the gentleman, the owner, pivoted around to me. He saw the Toro and noted that I liked sashimi, which obviously pleased him. Then he grabbed one of the small dishes and started asking for things from behind the bar, including sesame oil and bits of seaweed. He built a sauce, took my chopsticks and fed me a piece of Toro the way he likes to eat it. Needless to say, I didn't touch the soy after that. Also needless to say, it attracted an audience, but I didn't care. The chef behind the counter then decided to make me a "French-style" sushi, which was four types of fish, each in a different preparation that was perfectly matched to the fish. The presentation was nearly as good as the food. I'm afraid that's as far as I got through your guide, because there was no way I could have eaten a piece of sushi, much less a roll after what I had just eaten. In the meantime, I learned that one or two people in a given month come in looking for Toro and that even fewer wanted sashimi. I got the entire life story of the chef (Laotian) including his escape from the Communists in 1976. It also turns out that he's only recently been living in south Texas and we had several points of intersection thanks to my Navy travels. We exchanged names, I tipped well (because they didn't charge me for the additional dish) and I expect I will be back in the next week or so. I probably would have had a lovely meal even if I hadn't set aside the menu and ordered the sashimi right off the bat, but I suspect it wouldn't have been this good. So, thanks Fat Guy, I think it's safe to say that after my first visit, I'm officially a regular.
