Soy Long

Since Japan has been infested with American fast-food chains since the late Sixties, it’s only fair that we’d get a few Japanese fast-food outlets three decades later. Certainly, things could be worse: The modest spots serving quick, cheap Japanese fare that have popped up in Denver are individually owned, unlike the hamburger-breathing McDonald’s monster that devoured Japan.

And while the Japanese are scarfing down our hamburgers and fries, the Asian fast-food equivalent here is shredded meat and vegetables over rice, which makes for a difference of at least fifty grams of fat per serving and a much less grease-soaked stomach. That counts for something when you’re making an arduous fast-food decision (Extra Crispy tonight, or go light with a Whopper Junior?). Besides, since just about everything is made to order, you’ve got a good shot at having it your way.

If your way is covered with teriyaki or some other cornstarch-polished sauce, that is.

Ginza Express moved into Cherry Creek two years ago (there’s also one on the 16th Street Mall), around the same time it was becoming clear that Denverites would try just about any restaurant concept–at least once. And this was a twist on a concept that had already found a warm welcome here, the fresh Mexican grill. But something got lost in the translation to fresh Japanese grill.

Ginza is an alarmingly bright, spacious, spic-and-span eatery that even offers its own version of a wrap, a wheat tortilla enveloping meats and vegetables that’s called a “stuffer.” We tried the steak version ($3.90), which was supposed to pair thinly sliced charbroiled sirloin with steamed broccoli, cabbage, carrots and rice. Our tortilla, though, contained nothing but steak and onions, making it an Asian wrap version of the cheesesteak. Except the cheese had been replaced by a very sweet, gooey teriyaki sauce, a semi-liquid that seemed to come on nearly every cooked item I tried at Ginza during two visits. Too bad: Special sauce it ain’t.

The sauce coated the teriyaki chicken ($3.70), of course, ruining an otherwise delicious, tender, perfectly charbroiled breast atop a huge mound of rice. This order was the regular size–the large costs $5.55–but it was plenty for one, as long as the one likes a lot of rice. As unappealing as the teriyaki sauce was, the dish could have used more of it as a moistening agent: Only the top five or six bites of rice were edible; the rest was just so much lumpy glue.

We’d hoped to steer clear of teriyaki with the ginger salmon ($4.30), but no such luck. The salmon was slathered with the ubiquitous sauce, to which some ginger had been added. It didn’t help. The rice, too, had been augmented with a slice of lemon, a few teriyaki-slippery chunks of cabbage, and a smattering of shredded carrots. They didn’t help, either.

The rest of the hot-foods menu offered variations on the same basic themes, substituting steamed vegetables for the chicken, or steak for the salmon–but there was almost no getting around that sauce. Cautiously, we ordered one of the three curry dishes, half expecting that our vegetable curry ($3.50) would turn out to be mostly teriyaki sauce spiked with curry powder. Instead, we got a generous serving of vegetables–broccoli, cabbage and carrots–on rice, all buried beneath a cornstarch-thickened curry so heavy and gelatinous it seemed to have a slick, shimmering life of its own. The dish had a good flavor, with carrots and onions adding a homey quality, but after only a couple of bites, it felt like we were eating The Blob. Much safer–and smaller–was an order of plain steamed veggies (55 cents): a tiny bowl holding three broccoli flowerets, two pieces of cabbage and eight carrot shreds (yes, I counted).

We figured the sushi side of the menu had to be a teriyaki-free zone, especially since it warned that “sushi means SWEET VINEGARED RICE. It does not mean ‘raw fish.'” Judging from what appeared on our plate, however, it really meant smooshy raw fish on SWEET VINEGARED RICE. The fish combo ($6.50) featured one piece each of smooshy salmon, smooshy and tasteless yellowtail, smooshy tuna, rigid and overly chilled Krab, half a cooked shrimp and three tuna rolls. Those rolls–like the Krab-and-mayo California roll ($2.50) and the broiled, smoked (and parched) salmon roll ($3.75)–contained twice as much rice as you’d find in a roll at a decent sushi bar. You had to gum your way through dry rice and nori to get to the ingredients at the center–and they weren’t worth the effort. We sided the sushi with a tofu salad ($3.60) that was all iceberg rather than the promised “romaine and crispy lettuce”; it was topped by an adequate ginger dressing that tasted like French dressing with ginger added.

Ginza does have a few things going for it. The simple miso soup (95 cents) is fine. And the kitchen is undeniably fast–five minutes after you order, you’re eating. A pity that whatever you’re eating is probably drowning in teriyaki sauce.

Taki’s Golden Bowl also makes a mean miso soup (98 cents), a consistent Best of Denver award-winner for almost a decade. Brian “Taki” Takimoto took the recipe with him when he moved the original Golden Bowl across Colfax Avenue and down the block last year. The miso is concentrated but not too salty, pungent with ginger and seemingly imbued with flu-fighting and flu-preventing qualities. Although there’s no scientific proof–yet–of the soup’s restorative properties, most Capitol Hill residents will swear to them.

Running a healthy second is Taki’s edamame ($2.48), or boiled green soybeans. You suck the soybeans out of their little pods and savor them like peanuts, in the process ingesting all sorts of good things, according to recent medical research (see Mouthing Off). And Taki takes full advantage of all the positive press on this food’s healing properties, plastering information on the soybean across the restaurant like wallpaper.

Too bad it couldn’t cover up the dirt, which on two recent visits was only slightly less in evidence than it was at the first Golden Bowl. And while the kitchen seemed to be considerably cleaner than the dining room, the food coming out of it was much the same as what I’d eaten at the original: the same gloppy beef sukiyaki ($3.78) with a sauce that’s more like a Chinese gravy than a real sukiyaki; the same shrimp and vegetable tempura ($3.48) sopping with oil; the same dripping-wet gyoza ($2.50 for six dumplings) overcooked on the bottoms.

The California rolls ($2.48 for four pieces) had been sitting in the cooler so long they’d dried out. The ginger chicken ($4.28), on the other hand, should have spent some time sitting on paper towels; the deep-fried dark meat was so greasy it left puddles of oil on the cornstarch-shiny ginger sauce. And while the curry ($3.78) was adequate, it wasn’t anything to stop traffic for.

Both Taki’s and Ginza bill their fare as “healthy Japanese fast food,” but plain white rice has little nutritional value, and cornstarch-heavy sauces are no better for the heart than they are for the soul.

McDonald’s may have been a fair trade, after all.

Ginza Express, 140 Steele Street, 303-377-7800. Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.

Taki’s Golden Bowl, 341 East Colfax Avenue, 303-832-8440. Hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily.