Since moving to Minnesota, I've left the land of Curvy-ville and hopped on an express train to Chubby-town. So how exactly did my ass become so enlarged? While my new sedentary lifestyle may be partially to blame, I'd place a lot of the fault on the great restaurants in the Twin Cities that Flavio and I have been frequenting in the months following our move to Minneapolis.
Which leads me to a new series of posts on the Flaviana Blog: Restaurants I Like - featuring reviews of area restaurants in the Twin Cities that, well, I like. And if these posts encourage some of our friends in New York and other locals to come to the Mini-apple for a visit (ahem, you know who you are...) then I guess that's just gravy:)
I begin the Restaurants I Like series with Fuji Ya, a cool sushi restaurant located near the corner of Lyndale and Lake St. in Uptown Minneapolis.
Before going into my review of Fuji Ya, I just want to give a little background on my love of fish, seafood and sushi. As a general matter, I love pretty much all edible forms of water dwelling critters. As a kid, I used to love Lenten fish fries at the American Legion and eating shrimp cocktail during our annual beach vacations to South Padre Island, TX. To this day, I still love fish and typically eat a fish based meal twice a week. Needless to say, my love of fish (not steak, not fried chicken) will forever prevent me from becoming a vegetarian.
When I moved to NYC, my love of seafood expanded to include sushi in all its tasty variations. And, in addition to being delicious, sushi dinners have played a pretty important role in my relationship with Flavio. Our first date was at Sushi Samba, a sushi restaurant in the West Village that was very hip in 2003. Before Flav proposed, he and I had gone out to dinner at Haku, a cute little sushi restaurant in the Upper West Side, near where we both lived before getting married. And on our last night out East, we had dinner at Komegashi, a sushi joint in Jersey City, NJ, near the apartment where we lived after getting married. So, while I was excited to move back to Minnesota, its seeming lack of good sushi restaurants was definitely a negative aspect of our move.
After moving to Minnesota, Flav and I had a few negative sushi dining experiences which reinforced our impression that its impossible to get good sushi in a landlocked state. One expensive and highly rated sushi joint in the area served Flav a plate of sushi with pieces that were either mushy or frozen - big sushi no-no's. At another restaurant, when Flav and I ordered a sushi platter to share, we were served a California roll with imitation crab and mushy avocado - needless to say, totally nasty. After these experiences, if we needed a sushi fix, we would resort to utilitarian tuna and salmon rolls at Whole Foods, clearly a poor substitute. But were we doomed to packs of day-old California rolls? Not quite.
Enter Fuji Ya.
Sick of grocery store spicy tuna rolls, I decided to get back on the sushi horse and try another Twin Cities sushi restaurant. When I looked online, Fuji Ya was universally praised. AND, it had even received good reviews from other coastal transplants from Seattle and San Francisco. This was all Flav and I needed to give MN sushi another try.
For those of you who have never been to Fuji Ya's Uptown location, it's bar and dining area offer clean, neutral decor with lots of Chinese lanterns. (I know, sushi is Japanese, but we can let this slide) And, while you wait for a table, you are given this little guy pictured below. Definite upgrade from the light bright doo-dads at the Cheesecake Factory.
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| Hmm, I don't remember ever seeing this Pokemon... |
Fuji Ya bosted all of the sandard creature comforts we had come to expect at sushi joints in NYC:
It had assorted tasty Japanese beer:
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| Kampai!!! |
Delicious Edemame:
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| Salty Soy Goodness. Mmm-mm-mmm.. |
And Piping Hot Miso Soup:
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| Japanese answer to MN winters. |
But this was all a prelude to the main event:
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| Ohh Baby |
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| You look sooo good... |
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| Come to mama!!! |
In short, the meal was delicious. The white tuna sashimi was buttery and smooth. The salmon had the perfect amount of fat, giving it a terrific marbled texture. Needless to say, Flav and I became members of the Fuji Ya Clean Plate Club:
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| .5 seconds away from gobbling up the wasabi... |
Our meal was topped off with a pot of tea to settle our tummies and warm our bones before braving the cold.
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| Antioxigoodness |
All in all, Fuji Ya is great - I would highly recommend it to sushi novices and fellow sushi loving costal transplants alike.
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