From time to time, people will ask us how the transition has been, moving from the Bay Area to Seattle. I have to say that overall, it's been a lot easier than I expected. Seattle is pretty similar to the Bay Area -- lots of educated folks, a pretty progressive political bent, and a relatively diverse community. Sure, the weather bites in comparison to the Bay Area (and it's actually much more gray than we had expected), but developing our community of friends here has come quickly and we pretty much feel at home... well, except...
1. It's absurdly difficult to find good Chinese food here.
2. It's also surprisingly difficult to find great sushi.
So far, for our Chinese fix, we usually end up at a joint like the Northwest Tofu House, Fu Man or Jack's, or we make the drive up to Richmond, B.C.
The sushi conundrum has been more difficult. As I've heard other California transplants complain, amazing fish should be so much more readily available here, yet the quality overall tends to be somewhat disappointing and the prices are astronomically high (compared to the Bay Area). And you'd think there would be an abundant selection of fantastic sushi places... and we've been looking for 16 months for an adequate surrogate for our favorite place back in Berkeley, Sushi Sho.
I tried Shiro on my first trip here. Solid quality, but nothing particularly notable. No spark.
Nishino: Great fish, but really high prices and too large of a restaurant to feel a personal connection (although Moro-san was really nice).
Saito: People love this place, but it just wasn't for me. I was incredibly disappointed by the omakase.
I Love Sushi: Not sure why people are so devoted to this place.
Sushiland: Yeah, getting desperate... although surprisingly decent quality fish for the money.
Chiso: Promising, but I didn't like the texture of their rice.
Mashiko: Probably my favorite of this bunch. Great fish, good servers, very well made sushi... but way too many options on their non-sushi menu and surprisingly expensive.
Then we went deep into the cultural abyss that is Southcenter Mall and tried Miyabi. If this restaurant was located anywhere else, I might be tempted to keep it all to myself. But I already know the fact the restaurant is in Tukwila will keep it from ever getting flooded by Seattle-ites. Miyabi is a gem tucked away in a bit of a strip mall (shared by Bai Tong, our go-to Thai restaurant in the area) across from Magnolia Hi-Fi.
What you'll find when you go inside is a small-ish, nicely designed restaurant with a sushi counter in the back manned by Masa, one of the more interesting and engaging sushi chefs we've interacted with... a total character. Superb fish, if you know what to look for and how to ask for it, and a laid back setting that can get a little festive when the sake and beer are flowing... not so much that it distracts from the food, but enough to keep the place from being too serious. Amaebi that's thrashing around before being swiftly dispatched and placed onto its throne of rice... deliciously unctuous albacore... superb saba (briefly torched to extract the rich oils and make the fish meltingly tender)... and a sushi chef who knows exactly what condition his ingredients are in. Tonight we had a magical nigiri with uni, ika and ikura combined... I've never seen such a combination before, but it was simply a perfect marriage of flavors to balance out the stronger taste of the uni during this time of year. A real treasure, Miyabi's the kind of place where you're already planning your next visit the moment you step out the door.
Hands down, our favorite sushi place so far in Seattle. Oh wait, I mean,
Tukwila.
Lav bought some fantastic looking peas and had an idea for a salad of roasted beets, sweet raw peas, caramelized sweet onion, and green beans. The inky red juice of the beets bled into everything, making a wonderfully unified salad permeated with the natural sweetness of each ingredient.
She also had some sashimi-grade bluefin toro and a filet of Alaskan black cod, but wanted me to do something different with them. With the toro, less is more... you don't want to mask the unctuously rich flavor from its perfectly matched, meltingly tender texture. One of the things that seems to be getting more popular at sushi places these days is to lightly torch the top layer of the fish to extract some of the oils and intensify the intrinsic flavor of the fish... not to make it "fishy", per se, but to ensure that the fish actually tastes like something... like itself. That's the point, after all, right? Here, the aroma of the tuna was definitely heightened by the technique, while retaining most of the best qualities of being raw... much better than doing a quick pan sear, which tends to really overcook the fish.
For the black cod, I stole an idea from an episode of After Hours, which featured Michael Cimarusti of Providence in Los Angeles. Chef Cimarusti served a dish of raw Australian lobster in a lightly sweet broth scented primarily with purple shiso. I can only imagine how magical that pairing was, with the herbaceous scent of the shiso wafting ever so lightly as a backdrop to the sweet flesh of the lobster. Here, I adapted the concept for the black cod. We slowly reduced two cups of sake, infusing it with regular shiso (from our garden) and ginger. I thought the sake would be sweet enough on its own, but to ease up the impact of the lightly residual alcohol, we also added a few small dice of the roasted red beet. This resulted in a more complex dimension for the light sweetness of the broth and also made the flavors a bit rounder... ginger, shiso and sake each have their own slightly harsh edge.
The black cod was pan seared in browned butter, constantly basted as the sear was developing with the butter (just like we observed at Le Pigeon). This was served atop melted kale and a lightly cooked radish. To complete the dish, I poured the broth of sake, ginger, shiso and beet into the dish. It's been a while since a new effort like this has resulted in a really fantastic composition. The colors were vibrant, the flavors paired beautifully (ultra rich, buttery flavor to the cod, lightly contrasted and enhanced by the flavors of the broth). The one major edit that needed to be made was the radish, which hadn't been cooked long enough to get rid of its natural earthy funk.
In the end though, it was a pretty way to salvage an otherwise unremarkable day. 
