Sumika

2008.03.23
Sumika [Los Altos]
****

Yakitori-ya, serving "tapa" dishes. Everything was cleanly flavored and pleasantly presented.

House pickles (complementary) - Very clean refreshing crunch that heavily leaned into the gingers.

Japanese spring roll - Thin rice paper, tightly wrapped, good wasabi mayo, very nice.

Red Miso Soup with Clams - Potent miso soup with very bold miso flavor that even amnie agreed with, without suspicious "clam" that taste of a can.

Mentai Potato Salad - mousse of potato and spicy cod roe served on baguette chips with a field green, excellent.

Chicken Karaage - Served in a basket, not the best but good enough to eat.

Yaki Onigiri - Not at all like the drop-dead-delicious ones at Tanto, but nevertheless was interesting to try. Solid rice triangle patty evenly grilled on all sides (not caramelized like Tanto's), liberally soy'ed. A little sticky to the teeth, and no crunch, but tastes fine.

Yakitori: 2 chicken thigh, 1 chicken ball, 1 zucchini, 1 enoki mushroom wrapped in bacon - The chickens were very good, fine charcoal smokey, juicy and full bodied. Zucchini was a poor attempt at getting some vegetable intake, not again. Enoki with bacon of course cannot fail. Only complaint would be the small portions.

Oyako-don - Speaking of the small portions, we needed this to fill up at the end. When it came I was suspicous of the highly liquid egg and rice, but after a good mixing, the sauce coated the slightly al dente rice grains evenly and gorgeously, gives a wonderful mouth-feel and flavor. Worth every penny of the inflated $12.

$74 for 3, all incl.