A Cut Above

A sushi chef wields more than a knife. His skill–both at cutting fish and at cutting up–can make or break a Japanese restaurant. Some sushi chefs give you the silent treatment, making you feel like an unruly student in a Buddhist temple during meditation time; others are as deft at rolling out the welcome mat as they are at rolling up seaweed. Once fresh-fish fans find a sushi chef with whom they feel comfortable, they’re likely to follow him faithfully from restaurant to restaurant.

Miki Hashimoto and Kozo Sato are two such chefs. For the past decade, their legions of followers have driven all over town to sample their wares; now they can find both men at one location, Japon, which the pair opened in December to big crowds that have hardly abated. Many of the devotees remember the dicing duo from Sushi Den, but Hashimoto also worked at Mori and Samurai. He’s been on the cutting edge for ten years, and Sato has seven years on him. But Japon’s other sushi chef, Mori Sadao, holds the real black belt: He’s been at it for over thirty years.

Their experience shows, especially when you’re sitting at the sushi bar. On our first visit, though, we sat in the cramped rear dining room, which is barely recognizable as the old Gaylord’s, the clown-decorated breakfast spot Japon replaced. The space now has a decidedly Asian, streamlined look that’s exactly right for a restaurant that serves food you consume with your eyes long before anything reaches your mouth.

If you want it to get that far, however, you need to give up a few conventions. Japon is one of those authentic restaurants that expects customers to want an authentic experience. Hence, no spoons–unless you ask. But it was much more fun to pick up our bowls of miso soup ($1.50 on its own, but included with some entrees) and slurp out the contents. The dashi, or stock, was so clouded with shinshu-miso–the salty yellow variety of the soybean paste is the one most readily available in this country–that it was difficult to see the few cubes of tofu and sprinkle of scallion rings that augmented the brew. But the dashi was the most important element here, just as it is in many of the cooked foods in Japan. Most of the time the stock is made from seaweed or seafood, although using shiitakes, either in concert with one of those ingredients or by themselves, is also popular. Japon’s version relied on seaweed that had been rinsed so well it didn’t add any of its own saltiness (otherwise, the soup could have doubled as a salt lick).

We sampled some more seaweed in a salad ($4.75), one of those dishes people would be crazy about–if you could just get them to try it. Forget that seaweed is unbelievably good for you and that you could pretty much live on it, if necessary; it also tastes good, like a cross between a fish and a vegetable, crunchy and slightly sea-scented. This salad featured several seaweeds (including two of the best-known types, kombu and wakame, also called sea kelp and curly algae, respectively); with the added enhancement of Japon’s vinegar, it was a fine example of the Japanese food philosophy that calls for creating the most visually appealing and delicious dishes with the fewest ingredients.

And with that in mind, it was time to get down to some serious eating, starting with an order of salmon collar teriyaki-style ($6.50). The collar–the portion right behind the gills–is thought to be the best, most tender part of any fish (aside from the belly of a tuna). Although I’d tried a small portion of salmon collar before, this was a three-inch-thick cross-section of fish, slicked up with one of the least sweet takes on teriyaki imaginable. It was made the way teriyaki always should be, with the sugar cooked in sake, mirin and soy sauce until it dissolved completely–an extra step that most Japa-nese-wannabe restaurants are afraid to take for fear their patrons will miss the liquid frosting that passes for teriyaki in such establishments. Like vultures, the four of us picked at the skin-on steak until nothing was left but the skin and a few pieces of cartilage. Salmon doesn’t get any better than this.

And presentation doesn’t get any better than Japon’s “boat dinner” ($18.50 per person, with a two-person minimum), a repast delivered in a lacquered-wood vessel that we were disappointed we couldn’t take home as a souvenir. Our ship came in with a rare filet covered with more of that sumptuous teriyaki sauce; shrimp, acorn squash, carrots, green pepper and eggplant cloaked in sturdy, golden tempura batter (the vegetables were a separate $4.25 order); and soft-shell crab fried in the faintest dusting of seasoned flour. There were also two pieces each of eel sushi and shrimp sushi, eight slices of California roll, and two slices each of tuna, yellowtail and salmon sashimi (fish, no rice).

But it was with the raw portion of the meal that Japon almost missed the boat. While we certainly had no complaints about the quality of the fish–every piece was absolutely fresh–we couldn’t help but notice some haphazard cutting and poor assembly. A few pieces lacked tapered ends, while others looked as though they’d been cut against the grain; several had the limp look fish acquires after it’s been languishing in the display case. (Interestingly, sushi was invented when someone left a piece of raw fish lying on some vinegared rice: The fish started to ferment and sour slightly, and that’s the taste that first caught people’s palates. Only later did the Japanese introduce the custom of using the very freshest of fish.) And the rice under the eel suffered from Uncle Ben’s syndrome–it fell apart in perfect, separate grains when we tried to pick it up, a trait we like in our converted rice at home but not in our sushi rice.

There’s a saying in Japan that when the rice is wrong, the meal is wrong, but these infractions were too minor to truly mar our dinner. Our dining companions had visited Japon nearly every week and raved about the place; they’d always eaten at the sushi bar, though, and perhaps the dining room wasn’t getting quite the same level of attention. After all, the entire restaurant was packed and the demands on the sushi chefs heavy.

But they certainly did a masterful job on the extra rolls we’d ordered, most of them Hashimoto’s creations. The texturized Chicago roll ($4.75) contained crisp shrimp tempura, crunchy burdock root and soft avocado; I thought it looked like a rice version of Harvey the Rabbit until someone reminded me it was a Chicago roll–the John Hancock tower, of course. The California roll ($4.25), a duplicate of some of the boat-dinner cargo, was also top-notch, thanks to the creamy homemade Japanese mayonnaise. The biggest risk was the Rio Grande roll ($4.50 for four pieces), which combined egg, shrimp, shiitake, asparagus and burdock; the mix shouldn’t have worked, but it did. There was so much in the Hawaiian roll ($7.95)–tuna, yellowtail, salmon, shrimp, whitefish, mackerel and one swimmer the chefs had lying around–that nothing really stood out; the overall effect was one of lots of really good raw fish. We passed on the Roll in the Hay roll, which included tuna, sea urchin, salmon roe, flying-fish roe and toro, the aforementioned tuna belly, but we had to ask Hashimoto where the name came from. “Those ingredients are known to be aphrodisiacs,” he replied.

As any sushi fanatic knows, there’s something very sensual about raw fish. And I soon returned to Japon for my own notion of an ideal nooner. This time I sat at the sushi bar, and the service there confirmed my suspicions that our dinner had suffered because the place was so busy. I ordered the sashimi lunch combo ($10.99), which came with a bowl of miso soup and two pieces each of tuna, yellowtail, salmon and mackerel. The fish was stellar: expertly carved and super-fresh. The sushi chef was pleasant and even cracked a joke, and the service was express all the way.

As far as I’m concerned, Japon makes the cut.

Japon, 1028 South Gaylord, 744-0330. Hours: 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday; 5-10 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday; 5 p.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday.